Ballymagauran ‘Castle’ is a misnomer, and a gentle local one: what sits by the lakeshore is the base of a fortified Jacobean house, not a medieval keep. Phelim Magauran (Feidhlimidh Mág Samhradháin), chief of the McGovern clan, had it built around 1613 on land the Crown had just re-granted him under the Ulster Plantation. It was lived in for barely thirty years.
Be clear about what you’re coming for. The ruin stands on private land, it’s down to its footprint and lower courses, and a look from the road tells most of the story. The detour is really about the setting – Ballymagauran Lake, threaded by the Shannon-Erne Waterway – and the village around it. If you have an afternoon here, the castle is ten minutes of it; the lake and the fishing are the rest.
History
Long before the house, this was McGovern country. From about 1400 Ballymagauran was the chief seat of the Mac Shamhráin (anglicised McGovern or Magauran), lords of Tullyhaw, and the lake holds older stories still: a Viking sword pommel of around 900 AD was dug from a ringfort on its shore. The site is sometimes still called Lissanover Castle locally.
The house itself belongs to the Plantation. In 1611 the Crown re-granted the Manor of Ballymagauran to Phelim Magauran, and he began building a stone house of lime and stone in early 1613 – roughly 40ft by 20ft, ringed by a defensive trench and sod-dike. Pynnar’s Survey found it standing by 1619. Surveyors later recorded a two-storey house of rough, uncoursed limestone, about 9.5m by 5.9m inside, with a splayed window on the south wall, a fireplace and chimney at the east end, and a grotesque carved head at the north-west corner.
The heavy artillery of the Cromwellian wars in the 1640s left houses like this indefensible, and it was destroyed and abandoned after barely a generation in use. By the time Samuel Lewis’s topographical dictionary reached it in 1837, only ‘some remains of the old castle’ were left.
What to see
Honestly, not a lot, and that’s worth knowing before you turn off the road. The rectangular footprint is still legible and the base of the walls gives a sense of scale, but this is a ruin reduced to its lowest courses. If anything rewards a closer look it’s the weathered stone head at the north-west corner – mutilated by mid-20th-century vandalism, though the grooves under the chin still read as a grotesque, the sort of carving meant to ward off bad luck as much as to decorate.
The setting does the heavy lifting. The castle sits on a low rise above Ballymagauran Lake, which the Shannon-Erne Waterway runs through, so the ruin doubles as a waypoint for anyone boating the system. Across the water are the hills of County Leitrim, a few hundred metres off.
The village
Ballymagauran is a cluster of houses, a lake and two pubs, and the locals will happily tell you as much. The Ballymac Inn, run by Breege Cosgrove, does en-suite rooms and is the social centre for visitors and anglers; the Mucky Duck, run by the Galligan family, is the other. Fairs were once held on 23 May, 12 August and 23 November – the May Fair still runs each year and pulls a crowd.
Getting there
The village sits on the R205, about 4 miles north-east of Ballinamore and 3.5 miles south of Bawnboy, right on the Leitrim border. The ruin is on private land beside the lake and is best seen from the public road; there’s no visitor car park or real signage, so park considerately in the village and treat it as an add-on to a waterway or fishing trip rather than a destination in itself.
Nearby
- Ballyconnell Bridge and Canal Walk – a riverside stretch of the Shannon-Erne, a short drive north-east.
- Cavan Burren Park – dolmens and a wedge tomb in a megalithic landscape under Cuilcagh, with free entry and a visitor centre.
- Cavan County Museum – in Ballyjamesduff, with local history from the Plantation era and the original Killycluggin Stone.
Time a visit for the May Fair if you can; otherwise come for the fishing or the boating, and give the castle the ten minutes it asks for.