Blarney

Blarney Castle stands northwest of Cork, a stone tower house associated with the MacCarthys of Muskerry. Its lofty walls and projecting battlements were the centre of a lordship in the wooded country beyond the city. The earliest tower of the surviving castle was built under Cormac Láidir MacCarthy in the later fifteenth century, and a larger tower was added in the early sixteenth. In 1646 Parliamentarian forces under Lord Broghill seized the castle, bringing the Confederate wars to the MacCarthys' stronghold.