Dunguaire Castle
The tower on the rock at the edge of Kinvara Bay is Dunguaire, the fort of Guaire, the legendary king of Connacht: a sixteenth-century tower house of the O'Hynes, 75 feet tall, with its wall restored in the 1980s, and for decades the most visited castle in the county. Since 2023 its gates have been shut, and the town is not happy about it.
Checked against the source on 2026-09-19.
Boomur, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Dunguaire Castle, Saint Coman's Church on the 3D model; tap a pin for its page and directions.
The O'Hynes and the king
The nineteenth-century scholar John O'Donovan, in his Ordnance Survey letters and his history of the Hy-Fiachrach, records that Dunguaire was built by the Ó hEidhin clan, the Hynes, chiefs of the country around Kinvara and of Uí Fiachrach Aidhne, the territory between the Burren, Galway Bay and Slieve Aughty that matches the diocese of Kilmacduagh. The name reaches further back, to King Guaire, whose fort stood here; the legend of the Road of the Dishes, Bóthar na Mias, has his feast flying through the air to St Colman at Kilmacduagh.
On screen, and shut
Walt Disney used the castle as Boyne Castle in Guns in the Heather in 1969, and it was the Scottish home of the hero of North Sea Hijack in 1979. Its owner, the Shannon Airport Group, closed it in 2023 and offered it to Galway County Council, which declined for lack of money; the dispute over funding has kept it closed, and the frustration in Galway is on the record. The outside is still there to be walked to, a kilometre from the village quay, and the model on this page pins it.
Questions people ask
Is Dunguaire Castle open?
Who built Dunguaire Castle?
Which films used Dunguaire Castle?
Written from Wikipedia, "Dunguaire Castle" (CC BY-SA 4.0), read on 2026-09-19, and from the OpenStreetMap places on the model. Nothing has been added from memory; follow the source for its footnotes.