Welcome to Brackloon Castle and Farm

The wider area around Brackloon is steeped in history, not least as a result of its proximity to an ancient ecclesiastical and urban centre and three important crossing points on the River Shannon. Over the centuries many of the major historical events that have occurred nationally have also played themselves out in this region and their reverberations have resulted in the cultural, built and natural landscape we see around us here today.

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One mile to the north of Brackloon lies the ancient cathedral of Clonfert with its celebrated twelfth century Hiberno-Romanesque doorway and the ruins of the seventeenth century Bishop’s Palace. These two buildings are almost all that remains of the important medieval town and ecclesiastical centre of Clonfert, founded in the sixth century by St. Brendan the Navigator. Nothing else remains above ground of the town itself, its Augustinian abbey or its nunnery, with the exception of a few merchant’s tokens in the British Museum and possibly the medieval statue of the Clonfert Madonna and child, venerated in the small local church just a few hundred yards down the road from Brackloon.

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Within a short distance lies Meelick church, which at over 600 years old is one of the oldest churches still in use for Catholic services in Ireland, its turbulent history interwoven with that of Brackloon. To the west lies the planned village of Eyrecourt, founded in the late 1600s by the Cromwellian John Eyre who acquired Brackloon along with innumerable other confiscated properties about that time. To the east the bridge over the Shannon at the busy town of Banagher replaced Meelick as the principal river crossing locally. Both were of sufficient military importance to warrant forts and garrisons and later Napoleonic fortifications.

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Apart from a large number of ecclesiastical ruins, including Clontuskert, Kilconnell and Clonmacnoise and sites of conflict, the wider area is home to notable houses and castles and other buildings both large and small, in varying states of preservation and each with its own unique story to tell.

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The region’s natural heritage equals that of its architectural, to a large degree a result of its location on the central grassy limestone plain of Ireland. The plain is enriched locally by large areas of raised bog, a sandy ridge of eskers and the low-lying Shannon callow meadows, the subject of seasonal flooding. The local height of Redmount Hill, visible across the fields from the battlements of the castle, is crowned by seven clumps of trees known as ‘The Seven Sisters’. The variety of this landscape provides a rich habitat for a diverse array of flora and fauna.