In the Annals of Inisfallen, William de Burgo is recorded as having been granted the castle and estates by Domnall Mór Ua Briain, King of Thomond.

The earliest written reference to the castle appears in Leabhar nan Ceart, in English The Book of Rights, compiled in the 15th century, in which the fort of Gephtine is mentioned as being reserved to the King of Cashel.

The Earls of Desmond, the FitzGeralds, held possession of the castle for over 200 years; it was the centre of their power, and they ruled Munster from it.

The English launched a policy of total war and scorched earth upon the Irish clans who rebelled across the whole Munster.

Fleeing with a few retainers, on 11 November 1583 he was murdered by Moriarty of Castledrum, at Glenagenty, five miles east of Tralee at Bóthar an Iarlaigh.

During the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Askeaton Castle was occupied by Lieutenant Patrick Purcell of the confederate Catholics.

[citation needed] It has cloisters with 12 arches on each side, an east window, mediaeval carvings, and a chapter room that is the final resting place of the martyrs Bishop Patrick O'Healy and Fr Conn O'Rourke.

On 9 October 1579, after failing to take Askeaton Castle, the English commander Sir Nicholas Malby attacked the town and burned the friary, killing most of the friars, some in a gruesome fashion, and wrecked the ancestral tombs of the Desmonds, in a mean-spirited attack to take revenge on the earl in his impenetrable fortress.

[5] The present Catholic church was built in 1851, after the previous building near the Franciscan friary was totally destroyed by fire in 1847.

[7] East of the castle is the remains of the Hellfire Club, an almost intact redbrick building built in 1740 (the same year the monks abandoned the nearby friary).

This bizarre secret society was founded in Dublin in 1735 by the Earl of Rosse, first Grand Master of the Irish Freemasons.

In an interview on Limerick's Live 95fm on 18 April 2011, Kay McGuinness, chair of Shannon Foynes Port Company, said that they were confident that the rail link could be reopened.