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Sites and Monuments Record · Ireland

Castle - tower house

Ballydonnellan East, County Galway, Ireland

Ordnance Survey six-inch map, 2nd edition (1888–1915) covering the location of Castle - tower house, Ballydonnellan East, County Galway, with a pin at the register's coordinates
Ordnance Survey six-inch map, 2nd edition (1888–1915), covering this location. Courtesy of the National Library of Scotland. The pin is ours, placed from the register's coordinates.

The record

Townland
Ballydonnellan East
County
Galway
Country
Ireland
First-edition OS map
Ballydonnellan Castle
Latest-edition OS map
Ballydonnellan Castle (in Ruins)
Coordinates
53.25084, -8.41561
SMR number
GA098-028001-

Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.

David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries

4 historical maps cover this location, the earliest the 1753 map "Mappa geographica Regni Hiberniae" (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries).

Historical maps covering this location

  • 1753 · Mappa geographica Regni Hiberniae (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1790 · Composite: Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1869 · Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1891 · Ireland 16 (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)

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This record in the National Monuments Service's Historic Environment Viewer ↗

The National Monuments Service's description

In undulating grassland within the former Ballydonnellan estate. A poorly preserved tower (N-S 11.5m) built in 1412 by 'Tuly Odonelan' according to the foundation stone which is now in the yard of Aughrim National School. It was subsequently enlarged and remodelled in the 18th C when it was transformed into the flanking W wing of the adjacent (now level) 17th-C house (GA098-028001-); a similar wing was built on E side to balance it (Bence-Jones 1978, 20). Apart from W wall which is four storeys high, only the returns of N and S walls survive. A robbed-out doorway with brick insertions, in N wall, leads to a ground-floor chamber. A stone vault exists between ground/1st floors, Robbed-out rectangular windows are visible on 1st, 2nd and 3rd floors of W wall, and also a rectangular chimney stack embellished with two string courses. (O'Flanagan 1927, Vol. 1, 647-8)

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

Nearby in the register

Other entries of the same register within about three miles of this one, by straight line.

Sites and Monuments Record data: National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Record text is reproduced unchanged. National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland · CC BY 4.0
All Castle - tower house in Galway All County Galway records All Ireland Heritage registers Historical markers (US)National Register of Historic Places (US)
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