Leamaneh Castle is one of the most striking ruins in County Clare – a stark, roofless shell rising out of the Burren’s windswept limestone. What survives today is a marriage of two ages: a late 15th-century tower house, and a grander 17th-century manor added by Conor O’Brien and his formidable wife, Mary MacMahon.

In its heyday, Leamaneh was regarded as one of the finest houses in Ireland. But its reputation has long since been eclipsed by the shadow of its most infamous resident – Máire Rua, or “Red Mary.” Born around 1615, she was so nicknamed for her flame-coloured hair and, if legend is to be believed, her fierce nature.

Records show she married three times: first to Daniel Neylon, then to Conor O’Brien. After Conor’s death in 1651, fighting Cromwell’s men at Inchicronan, tradition claims his body was carried home and Mary dismissed it with the chilling remark: “What would I be doing with a dead man here?” Soon after, she wed John Cooper, a Cromwellian officer – a union widely seen as a ruthless bid to safeguard her lands.

History remembers her as pragmatic, ambitious and uncompromising. Folklore, however, goes much further – casting her as a merciless tyrant. She is said to have been cruel to servants, dangerous to men, and utterly terrifying to cross. Some stories claim she took as many as twenty-five husbands, each meeting a grisly end when she tired of them: hanged from the castle walls, dispatched with a kick, or otherwise disposed of. Tales of cruelty toward her household staff are just as grim – men supposedly hanged from beams, women strung up by their hair, or mutilated in unspeakable ways.

One enduring legend tells of her deadliest trick: a wild stallion, trained to gallop straight for the Cliffs of Moher before flinging its rider to a certain death.

How much of this is true we will never know. But the sheer persistence of these stories speaks to the reputation she carved in life and in memory.

Máire Rua lived into her seventies and died in 1686, almost certainly of natural causes. She was likely buried at Ennis Abbey, but legend insists otherwise. Some say she was captured by enemies and shackled inside a hollow tree to starve. For generations, locals pointed to a specific tree along the castle avenue as the place. Other tales say she was dragged to a “Druid’s Altar” and executed, or thrown from a horse into the fork of a tree.

And still, her ghost is said to wander. Visitors to Leamaneh have reported a red-haired apparition drifting through the ruins, sometimes skeletal, sometimes wreathed in flaming hair. On stormy nights, blood-curdling screams and wild laughter are said to echo across the Burren.

Sightings of her phantom horse have also been told – a pale rider in seventeenth-century dress racing through the roads, forever repeating her deadly equestrian trick.

Nor is she alone. Another spirit – the weeping daughter of a MacLeod chieftain – is also said to haunt the broken halls of Leamaneh.