Irish Castles, County Galway
Irelandseye.com takes a westward track, as our tour of Ireland's castles moves to County Galway.
ARDIMULLIVAN CASTLE
Standing on the brow of a secluded valley and surrounded by trees, this is a well-preserved early 16th-century tower house of the O'Shaughnessys. The castle is first mentioned in 1567 on the death of Sir Roger O'Shaughnessy. He was succeeded by his brother Dermot, "the Swarthy", known as "the Queen's O'Shaughnessy" for his support of the Crown. He became very unpopular in the district and indeed among his own family after he betrayed Dr Creagh, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, who had sought refuge in the woods on O'Shaughnessy territory. In 1579 his nephew John, popular heir to the family estates and title, fought with Dermot outside the south gate of the castle and both claimants were killed. In the last century the ruin was renovated.8 km (5 miles) S of Gort due W of the main Ennis Road.
ATHENRY CASTLE
The great fortress and walled town of Athenry played a vital role in the Anglo-Norman control of East Connaught. Construction of the castle can be dated to between 1235–41 and was undertaken by Meiler de Bermingham after being granted a charter by William de Burgo, the Anglo-Norman conqueror of much of Connaught. It comprises a particularly well-preserved first-floor hall standing isolated within a walled enclosure, which forms part of the town's mural defences.The bailey has been much restored, and there is a round tower at the south-east corner and fragments of another on the north-east. Excavations in 1989 did not resolve the problematic question of the exact location and nature of the entrance, which presumably lay in the south-west corner.
The town's walls were begun in 1312 and considerable lengths can still be seen. Not long after the completion of their walls one of the bloodiest battles of medieval Ireland was fought outside the town between Phelim O'Connor, King of Connaught, and the Anglo-Normans. The defeat of the Irish was so decisive that the constant struggle with the O'Connors came to an end – a process that seems to have resulted in a decline in the importance and strength of the town. It fell an easy prey to Red Hugh O'Donnell in 1596 and never recovered from the damage he inflicted.
Athenry. NGR: M 512288.
AUGHANURE CASTLE
The "ferocious O'Flaherties", masters of the whole territory of west Connaught, built this fine castle in the early 16th century, possibly on the site of a 13th-century Norman fortification. It occupies a position of some strength close to Lough Corrib on what is virtually a rocky island formed by the Drimmeen River, separating into two branches and reuniting at the other side – a circumstance that gave rise to the old phrase "Aughnanure, where the salmon come under the castle".A natural bridge of rock gives access to the inner bawn and tower house on the west. The well-built six-storey tower with a gracefully battered base imparts a very picturesque appearance and commands a wonderful view over Lough Corrib. Aughnanure is unusual in having a double bawn. Its riverside walls have survived whilst an outer wall has collapsed into an underground tributary river (now dry as its course has been changed). However, its pretensions to style are evident from the carvings on the soffits of the window embrasures depicting elaborate vine leaves and clusters of grapes in low relief.
The castle was the seat of the O'Flaherty chiefs until 1572, when it was captured by Sir Edward Fitton. Its position at the head of the lake allowed the castle to play an important role in the Cromwellian blockade of Galway, but afterwards it was forfeited and granted to the Earl of Clanrickard. Somehow the O'Flahertys remained in residence and in 1719 regained ownership, but later the castle passed to Lord St George on the foreclosure of a mortgage. In the 19th century a member of the Leconfield branch of the O'Flahertys planted yew trees about the castle to perpetuate its Gaelic name – the field of the yews.
3 km (2 miles) SE of Oughterard. NGR: M 1544.
BALLYLEE CASTLE
The poet W.B. Yeats was so enchanted with this 16th-century tower house beside the Cloon River that he purchased the property in 1916 and restored it. For twelve years Yeats made "Thoor Ballylee" his summer home which he found so "full of history and romance" that he was inspired to write "The Winding Stair" and "The Tower Poems". He once said: "To leave here is to leave beauty behind", and in a letter to Olivia Shakespeare wrote: "We are in our Tower and I am writing poetry as I always do here, and as always happens, no matter how I begin, it becomes love poetry before I am finished with it", and remarked "as you see I have no news, for nothing happens in this blessed place but a stray beggar or a heron."The castle originally belonged to one of the Burke septs – it stands four storeys high and its original windows still survive in the upper part, though Yeats and his architect installed larger windows in the lower floors. The ground-floor chamber was described by Yeats as "the pleasantest room I have yet seen, a great wide window opening over the river and a round arched door leading to the thatched hall". He also loved the mural stair, symbolically declaring "This winding, gyring, spring treadmill of a stair is my ancestral stair; That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke have travelled there."
Ballylee was abandoned and started to fall into ruin in the early 1930s. For the centenary of the poet's birth in 1965, however, the place was fully restored to appear as it was when he lived there. It now also houses an interpretative centre on his life and works. Lest it be forgotten that this was once the poet's home, there is a tablet on the wall commemorating his sojourn here:
I, the poet William Yeats,6.5 km (4 miles) NE of Gort on a minor road to the W of the Loughrea Road. NGR: N 481062.
With old mill boards and sea-green slates,
And smithy work from the Gort forge,
Restored this tower for my wife George;
And may these characters remain
When all is ruin once again.
DERRYHIVENY CASTLE
The building of true castles came more or less to an end in Ireland with the outbreak of war in 1641 – one of the very last being the tower house and bawn at Derryhivenny. Its date is known from an inscription on one of its bartizan corbels which reads "D:O'M ME:FIERI:FECIT 1643" and states that Donal O'Madden built the castle in 1643.A late date is supported by the absence of vaults on all four storeys of the tower and by its picturesque diagonally disposed Jacobean chimney-stacks. The upper rooms have two- and three-mullioned windows with good fireplaces, including one fine example with a plain chamfered lintel, curved downwards at each end and covered by a chamfered cornice. Along one side of the enclosure opposite the tower there are fragments of a one-storey gabled building, possibly a stable block.
6 km (3.5 miles) N/NE of Portumna, off a minor road lying E of the Eyrecourt Road. NGR: M 872085.
FIDDAUN CASTLE
Fiddaun is a lofty tower house that is best known for having one of the best-preserved bawns in Ireland. Built during the 16th century for the O'Shaughnessys, it comprises an oblong six-storey tower with vaults over its first and fifth floors. There are square bartizans placed very low down at third-floor level, a peculiarly Irish feature that was brought about by the introduction of firearms, which changed the axis of defence from the vertical to the horizontal.Most of the O'Shaugnessy estates were forfeited in 1697 when the castle's owner, Sir William O'Shaughnessy, fled to France. Though only fifteen in 1690, he had fought as a captain in the Jacobite cause and later in exile pursued a brilliant military career, becoming a Mareschal de Camp in 1734. The castle was continuously inhabited by O'Shaughnessys until 1727.
8 km (5 miles) SW of Gort off the Tubber road, lying on a low-level plain between two lakes. NGR: R 409949.
GLINSK CASTLE
In the decades preceding the 1641 Rebellion, a number of Irish landowners were building houses that tried to combine the need for spacious and luxurious living with an adequate means of positive defence. Inevitably, such houses differed from contemporary English manors in having fewer windows, high basements, musketry loops, bartizans and other defensive features. Nonetheless, many succeeded in projecting the air of a gentleman's residence, and few more successfully than Sir Ulick Burke's handsome strong house at Glinsk, probably begun around 1628.Glinsk was gutted by fire at an early stage and survives as an exceptionally well-preserved ruin. It has a three-bay rectangular plan of three storeys over a raised basement with an attic floor in its high gabled roof. The exact plan of the interior is unknown as there were only timber divisions, but the fireplaces were in the end walls where the stacks rise with tall, elegant shafts that are undoubtedly the best examples of their kind in Ireland.
6.5 km (4 miles) SE of Ballymoe
PALLAS CASTLE
The remarkably complete and well-preserved tower house was built by the Burkes sometime around 1500. It has four storeys and an attic, the third floor being vaulted and the thick end wall containing a tier of mural chambers and a winding stair. There are attractive mullioned windows in the fourth floor and a number of fine fireplaces on various levels, though the oven on the ground floor is a secondary addition. The roof was still thatched in the early part of the present century, the bottom being covered with stone flags for protection.The tower stands in one corner of a large well-preserved bawn, which has internal steps and parapets, a two-storey gatehouse (rebuilt) and a pair of round flankers with gun ports. Near the tower at the west end, there is a rectangular flanker, an 18th-century malt-house and the remains of a large 17th-century gabled house.
3.2 km (2 miles) E/SE of Duniry off the Portumna Road. NGR: M 757074.
PORTUMNA CASTLE
It is no exaggeration to describe Portumna as the most important residence to be built in Ireland until Castletown a century later. In grandeur and scale it was without equal when constructed in 1616–18 and like Castletown introduced a new sophistication to Irish architecture. The builder – not surprisingly a man of great wealth and power who moved in court circles – was Richard Burke, fourth Earl of Clanrickarde, Lord President of Connaught and descendant of a Gaelic chieftaincy of Norman origin that ruled much of Connaught for centuries. His house survived the wars of the 17th century, only to be gutted by fire in 1826. In recent years its great shell has been re-roofed by the State.The building belongs to a distinctive group of spacious semi-fortified rectangular houses with flanking towers at each corner. It rises to a height of three storeys, plus attics, above a raised basement and has an attractive symmetrical fenestration of regularly placed two- and three-mullioned windows and a skyline of battlements of small curved gables with pedestals and balls. At first glance it may not appear fortified, but it was surrounded by a bawn, whose wall and flankers still survive on the north side.
From mid 18th-century plans, we know that the interior was laid out in sets of state apartments in the French taste. From accounts of visitors in 1808 it is apparent that the state rooms were fabulously decorated with rich stucco ceilings and friezes, handsome panelling and magnificent furnishings.
The great house was requisitioned in 1634 by the unpopular Lord Deputy Stafford to hold the celebrated inquisitions into the titles of lands in Connaught. It was lost to Henry Cromwell from 1652 to 1660 and again forfeited by William III, but restored to the tenth Earl by Queen Anne. The family continued here in great pomp until the 1826 fire. The castle laid out a fine approach from the north, with its Gothic gates leading into the two great courts in front of the house. The inner court now has a restored Jacobean-style garden, though this would originally have had cut grass and statues.
Portumna. NGR: M 852040.
from the Appletree Press title Irish Castles
Click here Irish Castles to buy the newly reformatted book from Amazon.co.uk. The previous edition of Irish Castles is also still available from Amazon.co.uk.
