Donamon Castle, or more correctly, Dunamon Castle (), is one of the oldest inhabited buildings in

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

and stands on raised ground overlooking the

River Suck The River Suck ( ) is a river within the Shannon River Basin in Ireland, 133 km (82.5 mi) in length. It is the main tributary of the River Shannon. It meets the Shannon a kilometre south of the village of Shannonbridge. Name The riv ...

County Roscommon County Roscommon () is a Counties of Ireland, county in Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is part of the province of Connacht and the Northern and Western Region. It is the List of Irish counties by area, 11th largest Irish county by area and Li ...

History

There was a fort here from early times (hence the name Dún Iomáin, fort of Iomán), but the first recorded reference to "Dún Iomghain" is in the

Annals of the Four Masters The ''Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland'' () or the ''Annals of the Four Masters'' () are chronicles of Middle Ages, medieval Irish history. The entries span from the Genesis flood narrative, Deluge, dated as 2,242 Anno Mundi, years after crea ...

for the year 1154. It was the seat of the Ó Fionnachta chief of Clann Chonnmhaigh, one of the two main branches of this

Connacht Connacht or Connaught ( ; or ), is the smallest of the four provinces of Ireland, situated in the west of Ireland. Until the ninth century it consisted of several independent major Gaelic kingdoms (Uí Fiachrach, Uí Briúin, Uí Maine, C ...

family. In 1232, Adam de Staunton fortified the site further as part of the Norman conquest, but that structure was retaken and demolished by the native O'Connors the following year. A rebuilt castle was occupied in 1294 by de Oddingseles, who died the following year. The de Birminghams then took over but it was again destroyed by the O'Connors. In 1307 the O'Connors were supplanted by a branch of the Burkes, the head of which was known as MacDavid. The MacDavid Burkes occupied the site for the next 300 years. During the seventeenth century, a junior branch of the Caulfeild family came to own the castle and surrounding territory, and continued to own it throughout the Protestant Ascendancy. In late 1932, an IRA unit, under the command of Seán McCool and Mick Price, took over Donamon Castle to set up an IRA training camp. In 1939 the Divine Word Missionaries came to Ireland and purchased the castle from the Irish Land Commission. The missionary society constructed several new buildings to create a campus for training people before they went into the field. The training campus was managed by the Irish Wheelchair Association as a "National Holiday Centre" until its closure in 2019. The centre was reopened in 2022 to house Ukrainian refugees arriving into Ireland by Roscommon County Council with help from Irish Aid and Roscommon

Lions Club Lions Clubs International, is an international service organization, currently headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois. , it had over 46,000 local clubs and more than 1.4 million members (including the youth wing Leo clubs, Leo) in more than 200 ge ...

References

{{coord, 53.632, -8.319, region:IE-RN_type:landmark, display=title Castles in County Roscommon