What is recorded here

Cloigtheach rises sixteen metres above the Galway graveyard, its rough limestone courses catching light while the broken top spills sky into the chamber. The sandstone doorway stands four and a half metres above ground, forcing every visitor to climb or look up, as if the tower still refuses ordinary entry. It may have stored treasure, hidden people or simply marked the church for kilometres across open country. Whatever it did, it has kept doing it through storms, forgetting and the arrival of cars, turning a small circle of stone into a permanent witness.

Standing 5m W of the church (GA029-017002-) on W boundary wall of the graveyard. This ruined circular tower (D 4.8m, H 16.5m), which stands on a plinth, was a least three storeys in height. It is built of roughly cut and regularly coursed limestone save for the plain round-headed doorway on NE side which is of sandstone. This stands 4.55m above ground level. There are traces of a window on NNE side in the broken wall just above 2nd-floor level. (Kelly 1901b; O'Flanagan 1927, Vol. 1, 92-5; Barrow 1979, 97-8) 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 monument was taken into Ownership under the National Monuments Acts 1930 to 2014 - National Monument 48.

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