Architectural fragment in Townparks (galway By., St. Nicholas Par.)

Although this may look like the remains of a late medieval house façade this wall is entirely fake and was built in 1854 at a cost of £11. Fragments from five genuine old windows and two doorways, a key-stone from a fire-place lintel and other bits and pieces were brought together and assembled to look like the façade of a house. The reason behind this is recounted on the rectangular panel below the large window which bears the following inscription: ‘This ancient memorial of the stern and unbending justice of the chief magistrate of this city, James Lynch Fitzstephen, elected mayor A.D. 1493, who condemned and executed his own guilty son Walter on this spot, has been restored to this its ancient site A.D. 1854 with the approval of the Town Commissioners by their chairman, V. Revd. Peter Daly, P.P. & Vicar of St. Nicholas.’ The 'ancient memorial' to which it refers is the small gable-shaped stone inset in the wall directly below it and carved with a skull and cross-bones. The stone is dated 1624 and is inscribed: 'remember deathe vaniti of vaniti & all is but vaniti'. Both the carving and inscription are typical of memorials found in graveyards of this period, the latter been based on the well-known epigram from the Old Testament (Ecclesiastes 12:8). It formerly had been set over the doorway of a house which stood on this spot. The plaque – and by association the house – became identified in the local folk tradition with the story of the 'stern and unbending justice' of James Lynch fitz Stephen, mayor of Galway in 1493, who if local tradition and folklore are to be believed hanged his son from the window of his house as an example to posterity: his son had broken trust with a stranger and murdered him. These are the essential elements of the tale which has been embellished in many forms since first recorded in the 17th century and, regrettably, it is not now possible to establish if there is any truth in it. There is no evidence whatsoever to link either this carving or the house in which it stood with the story or anyone mentioned in it. Nonetheless, the house (which by the early nineteenth century was called the Crossbones) became firmly fixed in the minds of the citizens as the place where it all happened. And so when it became necessary to demolish the building in 1844 the 'cross-bones' plaque was preserved. Eventually it was decided to erect a fitting monument to contain it and, in 1854, the fake façade was constructed using the old fragments. But it was not long until people began to consider the whole façade itself as part of an authentic late medieval house and eventually it was believed that this was the very window at which the dreadful deed was carried out. And so the monument entered the literature and local parlance as the 'Lynch Window' or 'Lynch Memorial Window' and was accepted as fact until the whole story was demythologised in the late 1960s (Mitchell 1966-71). In 1978 the memorial was dismantled and reassembled with a concrete backing: it was set a little back from the pavement so that it could be viewed properly. Two side walls were erected to link it to the boundary wall and these were flanked with pillars which formerly were gate piers into the churchyard beside it. (Mitchell 1966-71; Walsh 2001, 92-4) GA094-100067-_01.jpg: View of the Lynch Memorial. GA094-100067-_02.jpg: The ‘cross-bones’ memorial dated 1624. GA094-100067-_03.jpg: A keystone from a fireplace displaying the impaled arms of the Lynch’s/Penrice (left) and Browne (right) flanked by the initials GL [Lynch] and EB [Browne]. This fragment probably dates to the first half of the 17th century. Compiled by: Paul Walsh Date of upload: 5 March 2015