What is recorded here

Castle Ffrench stands on a steep Galway ridge, locally called O'Kelly's Castle before the ffrench family acquired it in the late 16th century. Time has reduced most of it to grass, memory and scattered stone, yet the SW corner still rises fifteen centimetres above the ground like a stub of forgotten instruction. The NW and SE walls hide beneath boulders and vegetation, perhaps ten and two metres long, while a faint adjoining trace may mark the lost bawn. A pointed arch in the nearby garden may have belonged to the castle itself, waiting for someone honest enough to stop calling it merely a garden.

On a steep ridge in gently undulating grassland. Known locally as O'Kelly's Castle, it was acquired by the ffrench family in the late 16th C (Bence-Jones 1978, 66). Only fragmentary remains survive, principally at SW corner (L 1.5m), while overgrown boulders may indicate the line of NW (L c. 10.5m) and SE walls (L c. 2m). Faint traces of on overgrown wall (L 10m) adjoining castle wall at SW may be the remains of the bawn. According to the landowner, a pointed arch doorway in the walled garden immediately to NE may originally have been part the castle. A 17th-C tower house (GA047-015----) lies c. 200m to E and an 18th-C mansion c. 300m to NE. (O'Flanagan 1927, Vol. 1, 243) The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Galway Vol. II - North Galway'. Compiled by Olive Alcock, Kathy de hÓra and Paul Gosling (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1999). Date of upload: 05 August 2010

The Castle Ffrench was held by the ffrench family in the late 16th century and is remembered for its association with local gentry during the early modern period in Ireland.

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