Cloghan Castle, Loughrea, Galway

tcooley

Hi all,

I just want to look into some of the history of Cloghan Castle outside Loughrea, Galway.

Most of the web searches are all to do with it being now a wedding venue. Is there any online source where I can get info??

Also can anyone recommend any journals I could get in the library or online?

I've been on the NUI Galway library page but nothing seems to stick at the moment.

Cheers,

shanew

Some Castle ruins shown of the historic OSI Maps that seem to be the one you mentioned. Townland is Castleboy, and the civil parish is Killinane, and this is included in Lewis 1837 with a brief mention of the castle ruins.

DeepSleeper

It was a castle of the MacHubert Burkes - a branch of the Clanricard Burkes who were the principal lords in Co Galway. The MacHubert Burkes appear to have been based at Isert Kelly Castle (a 15th-century tower house and bawn) and then seem to have built other, smaller tower houses nearby in the 16th century (including Cloghan and Deerpark). These two later tower houses were built using 'sectional construction' - a modern term to describe a tower house being built in two parts, one narrow section containing the entrance doorway and the spiral stair being built first and then the larger, section second being built soon afterwards. They are a particular type of tower house confined to Galway, Clare and Limerick and appear to date to the sixteenth century - the suggestion that Cloghan dates to 1239 (found on the Cloghan Castle website) is nonsense - it's is out by about 300 years! It is actually unclear if the larger, second half of the building was ever built at Deerpark or Cloghan - similarly, the little castle in the middle of Galway Racecourse at Ballybrit is actually just half a tower house, the second section being absent (knocked or never built? Hard to tell...)

For a brief mention of Cloghan in the list of castles from 1574, see J.P. Nolan's paper 'Galway Castles and Owners in 1574' which was published in the Journal of the Galway Archaeological And Historical Society volume 1 (1900-01), p.109-123

For a discussion of sectionally constructed tower houses, see R Sherlock's paper 'Cross-cultural occurrences of mutations in tower house architecture: evidence for cultural homogeneity in late medieval Ireland?' which was published in the Journal of Irish Archaeology in 2006 - available online here

tcooley

lads,

thanks for those replies. A great help. Should be all set now. It was proving to be a bit difficult.