The former Franciscan friary at Kilcrea, County Cork has been discussed here before (see Lo Arthur Leary, November 2nd 2015). Not far away is a five storey tower house completed around 1465 by Cormac Láidir Mór, Lord of Muskerry then-head of the McCarthy clan. As Coyne and Wills wrote in The Scenery and Antiquities of Ireland (1841), ‘The ruins evince it to have been a place of considerable extent and rude magnificence.’ It was also intentionally built within sight of the friary which Cormac Láidir Mór had established around the same time: As the photograph below shows, a perfect view of one from the other can be seen through a window on the uppermost level of the old castle, reached via a stone spiral staircase.