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Photo: Benson Wills, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
It wasn't just the Normans who built substantial stone castles, this one was erected in 1474 by Red Hugh O'Donnell at the same time as the abbey. That dynasty held it until they fled Ulster in 1607 after the Nine Years War. They torched it to prevent its use against the local Irish, but it was soon restored and extended by the incomers in Jacobean style. It fell into ruin in the 18th century but was restored from the 1990s and is now an event space.
Donegal Castle is a castle situated in the centre of Donegal Town in County Donegal in Ulster, the northern province in Ireland. The castle was the stronghold of the O'Donnell clan, Lords of Tír Conaill and one of the most powerful Gaelic families in Ireland from the 5th to the 16th centuries. For most of the last two centuries, the majority of the buildings lay in ruins but the castle was almost fully restored in the early 1990s. It is now open to the public.
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This is an 18-hole championship links course, blue tees 6819 m, par 73.