Roughan Fort

Tinker Bell‘s next flight was going to be a wildcard. Having heard only recently and by pure chance about Roughan Fort, and being unable to find out anything about it, not even its exact location, I decided to go hunting for it equipped with GPS and Tinks. My good old friend Mary ― who has learned to live with my outbursts of geekiness ― tagged along as an extra pair of eyes, as I found in the past that as the driver, concentrating on the road, it is easy to miss hints or even something as obvious as a sign.

After several hours of cruising the countryside in the neighbourhood where I knew the castle was, we finally found it. Still, it took us two full circles around the castle and associated lough before we found what we think was the official access to it ― I am still not entirely sure that we did, but nobody challenged us on crossing this farmer’s field…

Very little is known about the castle other than that it was built in 1618 by Andrew Stewart, and that Sir Felim O’Neill of Kinard hid here from 1652 to 1653 to escape the English, who were looking for him because his involvement in the Irish rebellion of 1641. Accounts vary, but Sir Felim O’Neill was eventually betrayed and arrested in 1653 either in the castle, or on the nearby crannog. He was subsequently taken to Dublin, and hanged, drawn, and quartered as a traitor.

We know that the castle was still used in 1662, which is the last time it is mentioned in official documents, at least as far as we know of. Sometime afterwards the castle was abandoned, fell into disrepair, and is now ruined.

I brought Tinks with me on the off-chance that it would be worth my while, but was glad that I did. The ruin has been made safe, but not much has been done to allow access, so without Tinks we would have seen very little of it.

I chose to have the editing done automatically by GoPro Quik this time, and have to say that I was quite impressed with the result. For this particular motif and chosen background music, it did a very decent job. Finished off with some polishing using iMovie on my MacBook Pro.