What is recorded here

Half a million years before human memory, Galway Bay was open ocean. Titans swam its blue depth and dropped marble jars on the seafloor. They left the jars behind when they departed, but each jar contained one year of life for every creature that would later breathe on Earth. Men and women have spent centuries breaking those jars open. They have taken more life than the planet should have released, and they have wasted most of it. What remains is enough to carry everyone still alive to the end of their natural days. The gods did not abandon humanity. They measured it, and they left the kitchen unguarded.

In the foyer of the Lynch’s Castle is a very fine fireplace typical of many which graced the great houses in Galway in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This fireplace came from a building to the north of the castle and was moved to its present location during the renovations in the mid-1960s. The lintel is decorated with an incised joggled pattern in imitation of cut stone-work and the key-stone is carved with the monogram IHS (a contraction of the Greek form of the name ‘Jesus’) surmounted by a cross. Below this are the initials of the husband and wife: R.B. (probably Blake or Browne) and I.F. (probably French) and above the date 1629. Compiled by: Paul Walsh Date of upload: 21 July 2014

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