The castle is now owned by Sean and Anne Ryan who bought the property in 1991 and have undertaken restoration work to turn the building into a family home. There is rumoured to be a network of tunnels and secret chambers hewn out of the rock below the keep where human remains have been discovered. After the fire, workers cleaning up the castle discovered the oubliette, and to their horror found many skeletons in the dungeon (some reports say three cart loads of human bones were recovered from the dungeon). The castle was burned down during the Irish Civil War in 1922.
The castle passed to the Darby family through marriage in 1659. The O'Carrolls regained possession by 1557. The Earl of Kildare, Gerald FitzGerald, attacked the castle in 1526 partially demolished it.
Leap Castle was built around 1250 by the O'Bannon family who were subjects of the ruling O'Carroll clan.
Leap castle series#
At the bottom were a series of spikes designed to impale the prisoners as they hurtled down. In a corner of the Bloody Chapel is the entrance to the secret dungeon or oubliette where prisoners were thrown down through a trap door and left to die. The main hall was in the tower, and above this was a chapel which became known as the 'Bloody Chapel' after one of the residents, Teige O'Carroll, murdered his brother, who was a priest, while he was at the chapel altar. The castle was originally a tower house, and has been extended with the later addition of wings on either side. It was originally built to guard a strategic pass through the Slieve Bloom mountains. Leap Castle is built on a rock about four miles north of Roscrea in County Offaly.
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