County: Galway Site name: Claregalway
Sites and Monuments Record No.: GA070–036 Licence number: 06E0792
Author: Rory Sherlock, 73 Churchfields, Lower Salthill, Galway.
Site type: Tower-house and bawn
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 537275m, N 733314m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.346328, -8.942016
Claregalway Castle, a 15th-century tower-house on the north bank of the River Clare, is currently under restoration and, following excavations undertaken on the site by Billy Quinn (see No. 773 above), the author was asked to conduct a limited research-driven excavation to gain additional information on the nature and extent of the bawn wall which once existed on the site but which now survives only as subsurface foundations.
The western wall of the bawn is thought to have extended northwards from the immediate vicinity of the tower house for c. 35m and, though the foundations of much of this section probably lie under an extant later farmhouse, a 4.6m-long and 1.42m-wide section of foundations at the northern end was uncovered through excavation. At the north-western corner of the bawn, the foundations of a D-shaped corner turret, with a diameter of 3.5m, were uncovered, while the surviving evidence for sections of the 40.9m-long northern bawn wall was also revealed. This wall was generally 1.4m thick, though a centrally positioned 5.2m-long rectangular section which projected forward of the wall face by 1.1m may represent the remains of an entrance gatehouse.
A section through the extramural ditch outside the northern bawn wall revealed it to be a broad, shallow feature measuring c. 6.5m in width by just 1m in depth. The eastern wall of the bawn, which meets the northern wall with a simple right-angle corner, extends southwards for just 11.8m before turning at an angle of c. 40° to form the south-eastern bawn wall. Just 3.25m of the south-eastern wall were uncovered in the excavation trench, but it clearly continues under the baulk and is thought likely to have extended for c. 45m in order to complete the bawn circuit in the vicinity of the tower-house. The blunt angle created by the junction of the eastern and south-eastern bawn walls was protected by a second D-shaped turret, this example measuring up to 3.7m in diameter.
The excavated strata across the site were generally post-medieval layers which appear to relate to the destruction and clearance of the bawn walls and finds were limited to animal bone fragments, brick and clay tile fragments and occasional clay pipes.
