Conna Castle, County Cork, few owners of which appear to have enjoyed happy lives. Situated on a limestone outcrop above the river Bride, work on this tower house began in 1554 and seemingly took ten years to complete for the FitzGeralds, a branch of the Earls of Desmond. Hoping to inherit the title, they did not participate in either of the Desmond Rebellions and following the death of the fifteenth earl in 1583 petitioned Elizabeth I to be recognised as his successor. Unfortunately, they were descended from a marriage between the fourteenth earl and his own grandniece, judged to be outside the acceptable boundaries of consanguinity, thus making offspring from the union illegitimate. James FitzThomas FitzGerald, who had hoped to become the sixteenth earl, on his return to Ireland from London was mockingly known as the the Sugán or ‘Straw’ Earl. In 1598 he joined in the rising initiated by Hugh O’Neill but was defeated and went into hiding, eventually being betrayed to the English forces by a cousin Edmund FitzGibbon, the White Knight: taken to London, FitzGerald died in the Tower of London apparently having become insane. The lands around Conna then passed through a number of hands before becoming part of the territory owned by Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork. In 1645 during the Confederate Wars it was captured by the third Earl of Castlehaven: five years later the English forces made an unsuccessful attempt to take the castle back. However damage occurred a few years later owing to a fire which also claimed the lives of the steward’s three daughters. Conna has been in state ownership since 1915.