De Courcy Castle is the great stone wall and gate-tower thrown across the narrow neck of the Old Head of Kinsale – a barrier that sealed the whole two-mile headland into one defended enclosure rather than the single tower the name suggests. You’ll also see it called Old Head Castle or Downmacpatrick Castle. The headland beyond the wall is now the Old Head Golf Links, members only, so the castle is something you look at from the landward side rather than explore. That’s the honest catch here: there is no interior to tour, no ticket, no opening hours – just the wall, the gate-tower and the setting.
And the setting is the reason to come. The Old Head is the closest point of land to where the RMS Lusitania was torpedoed in May 1915, with the loss of nearly 1,200 lives. The Old Head Signal Tower near the entrance, a Napoleonic-era lookout, now houses a Lusitania Museum with artefacts recovered from the wreck – a deckchair, plates, cutlery. If you make the trip down from Kinsale, the museum and the view are what justify it; the castle wall is the bonus on the way in.
The de Courcy story
The de Courcys came to the Old Head by marriage. After the Norman conquest the lands around Kinsale passed down to an heiress whose dowry included both the Old Head and nearby Ringrone, and she married Milo de Courcy, a grandson of the Anglo-Norman knight Sir John de Courcy. Around 1223 Milo built new castles at both sites; the Old Head wall and its gate-tower keep date from then. The family became Barons of Kingsale, one of the oldest hereditary titles in Ireland, and held the headland as the centre of the estate.
It was a violent inheritance. In 1261 Milo de Courcy defeated and killed Fineen MacCarthy Mór at Ringrone, and the feud between the two families ran on for more than 240 years. The MacCarthys eventually wrested the Old Head castle back in the late 16th century, with Owen MacCarthy taking up residence while the de Courcys tried in vain to recover it. The English Crown settled the matter in 1600, taking the castle the year before the Spanish landed at Kinsale in 1601. Its military use over, the wall was left to weather.
What’s left
What survives is the long defensive wall across the isthmus, with the foundations of towers along it and the stronger gate-tower – the castle’s keep – still standing above the grass. It’s early 13th-century Norman work: coursed stone and narrow openings, set on a headland that drops to the Atlantic on both sides. Tradition holds the same neck of land carried a far older promontory fort, Dún Cearmna, long before the Normans arrived, which is why the spot was worth walling off in the first place.
Two other structures share the headland and make the timeline legible at a glance: the Old Head Signal Tower (now the Lusitania Museum) near the entrance, and the black-and-white banded Old Head Lighthouse out at the tip.
Visiting
The Old Head is about a 20-minute drive south of Kinsale in County Cork, down the R604 through Ballinspittle. The castle wall and the signal-tower/museum area sit near the entrance to the headland, before the golf gate; the golf links itself is private, so don’t expect to walk out to the lighthouse.
- Cost: Free to see the castle wall from the public approach; the Lusitania Museum at the signal tower charges separately – check its hours before you travel, as they are seasonal.
- Underfoot: Grassy, uneven ground near the wall; wear proper shoes, and it’s not wheelchair-friendly.
- Facilities: None at the castle itself. Bring what you need, and dress for Atlantic weather that turns quickly even in summer.
- Dogs: Fine on the lead, but keep well back from the cliff edges.
Go on a clear, calm day and pair it with the Lusitania Museum – the headland is exposed, and in a strong south-westerly the wind off the Atlantic does most of the talking.