A Brief History of Terryland Castle

Introduction

By the Quincentennial Bridge on the River Corrib lies the remains of Terryland/Terriland (originally known as Tír Oileáin/Terrylaun/“Oldcastle” [sic], this siteseemingly should have developed to take on the name Tirellan in English but it did not^i,ii,iii) Castle. This much shorter article will detail some of the more significant parts of the castle’s history. While the article itself will not delve into detail on topics such as infantry presence due to the sheer amount of instances where the castle was used, many of the books and articles listed in the endnotes of this blog post list some interesting tidbits missing from this article. Despite this absence of detail, the overarching narrative of the castle is present in this piece.

Some Major Events

The site, originally developed in the late 16^th century, was intended by descendants of the De Burgos to stop the O’Flahertys from crossing east into the higher quality land^iv,v. This would not last however, as instead of staying here, in short, the De Burgos would move from Terryland Castle to Castlegar for a night before moving to Portumna. Ironically, this decision was made in fear that they were unsafe in the event of an O’Flaherty invasion. There is a brilliant article called “The Castle of Tír Oileáin” by Tom Kenny which is too dense to rewrite here without plagiarising the piece. It is absolutely worth reading after this post^vi.

In 1642, the site would be used against Galway in rebellion against the Earl of Clanricarde but would be used in 1651 by the city to defend the area against the Cromwellians—unsuccessfully, with the it being the first outpost captured by the army by 1692—and then again during the siege of 1691 against King William’s forces—this time, the Irish defending the site would go on to burn the castle (this is the cause of the site being roofless to this day) and continue defending the grounds before needing to retreat along the river bank to the city^vii,viii.

Recent Developments

The building has suffered in more recent decades largely since hurricane Debbie in 1961^ix,x. 1984 was a particularly disappointing year for those interested in Galway’s heritage, with one gable wall falling in 1984, some of the bawn wall being knocked intentionally to… mend… the castle with the stone, and some of the stone walls being “reduced” outright from the site to make the area safer before construction of the Quincentennial Bridge began^xi. More would collapse then due to another storm in early 1991^xii.

Unfortunately, Maurice Semple wrote in 1988 that the construction of the approach road to the New Bridge had made the ruins less stable as a consequence of the road’s close proximity to the structure^xiii. Even more unfortunate, is that this outcome was preferable to the alternative, with Fox et al. discussing in 1979, a (now thankfully unfounded) fear that the remains would be knocked to make way for that road and bridge which would be built by Semple’s time of writing^xiv.

Endnotes

¹ Richard Hayward, The Corrib County (Dundalgan Press, 1993), 147–48.

² Peadar O’Dowd, Old and New Galway (The Connacht Tribune Ltd., 1985), 55.

³ Tom Kenny, ‘THE CASTLE OF TÍR OILEÁIN’, Kennys.Ie, accessed 25 December 2025, https://www.kennys.ie/old-galway/1929-the-castle-of-tir-oileain.

⁴ Peadar O’Dowd, Galway City Waterways: A Walking Tour (The Connacht Tribune Ltd., 1985), 4–5.

⁵ Edward Fox et al., Gaillimh: Mar a Bhí Agus Mar Atá – Galway: Past and Present (Regional Technical College, Galway, 1979), 24.

⁶ Kenny, ‘THE CASTLE OF TÍR OILEÁIN’.

⁷ Fox et al., Galway: Past and Present, 24–26.

⁸ O’Dowd, Galway City Waterways: A Walking Tour, 5.

⁹ Fox et al., Galway: Past and Present, 26.

¹⁰ O’Dowd, Old and New Galway, 56.

¹¹ Ríona Egan, ‘Collections Spotlight – “Ruins of Templeland Castle, Co. Galway” Watercolour’, Galway City Museum, 27 April 2021, https://galwaycitymuseum.ie/blog/collections-spotlight-ruins-of-templeland-castle-co-galway-watercolour/.

¹² Seán Spellissy, The History of Galway: City & County (Celtic Bookshop, 1999), 136.

¹³ Maurice Semple, Where The River Corrib Flows (Galway, Ireland, 1988), 74.

¹⁴ Fox et al., Galway: Past and Present, 26.