FILM BUFFS might recognise it from David Lean's 1969 film Ryan's Daughter. Now a gaunt hulk, Minard Castle is where Rosy first meets the English captain before embarking on any number of passionate trysts along Dingle's tempestuous coastline.
The castle dates back to the 16th century, when it was built as a stronghold for the Knights of Kerry. It is the largest fortress on the Dingle Peninsula. In the Cromwellian period
Walter Hussey, a Norman who had settled in Dingle, garrisoned it.
Cromwell's colonels Lehunt and Sadler beseiged the castle in 1650. The castle defenders were short of ammunition, so were forced to use pewter bullets. As soon as the besiegers noticed this, they approached the castle by stealth, placed a charge under it and blew up a great section, killing all the occupants.
The castle walls still stand, a four-square fortress topping a hill that slopes to the sea. Great smooth, round boulders thrown up by the sea and piled one on another fill a natural storm beach at the foot of the hill. The large sandstone boulders were used for ogham stones in the area. On the far shore of the bay the Iveragh Peninsula rises, far higher and more sharply cut than Dingle's smoothly undulating backbone.
Beyond the castle a side path leads to the spring of Tobar Eoin, or St John's Well. Coins and white quartz chips lie in the pool, whose waters allegedly hold an eyesight cure. Above the well a seamed old tree is festooned with strips of rag, each tied there for a wish or a prayer, as people have done here since long before Christ.
Minard Castle is five kilometres southwest of Annascaul village. Travelling from Killarney, at Lispole, turn left after O'Sullivans Pub along the winding gravel road.
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