A privately owned 16th-century tower house on the R421 north of Roscrea, one of Ireland's longest continually inhabited castles and, by its own reputation, its most haunted — visited by arrangement with the owner rather than as a state-run heritage site.
The Great Hall is the first room you enter, from the eastern side, and it links the wings, an outside terrace and the upper levels. From it a spiral stair in the south-eastern corner reaches every floor of the three-storey tower.
At the top of the tower, the upper chamber known as the Bloody Chapel holds a narrow opening in its north-eastern corner, the oubliette, and gives access to the bartizan, northern passage and battlements. The castle presents the room's architecture separately from the murder legends attached to it.
The northern range, its fireplace timber dated to about 1571 and later remodelled in Gothic style, has been an empty shell since the 1922 fire. It is the most ruinous part of the site.
A mural passage leads to the spiral stair in the south-west angle, from which all rooms are reached; a small loft, the Minstrel's Gallery, sits above the Upper Hall. Expect uneven steps, low openings and confined spaces.
Leap sits on a rocky outcrop that once guarded the pass through the Slieve Bloom Mountains, and its defensive logic reads best from the approach. Surviving photographs show the western side as it stood before the 1922 burning.
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