Motto Primus ultimusque in acie (First and Last in Battle)
An ancient family in Galway, the Skerretts descended from a noble English line originally known as Huscared. Landholders under Richard de Burgo in 1242, they were benefactors to the monastery at Athenry. Richard Skerrett was Provost of Galway in 1378. Major estates included Ballinduff, Drumgriffin, and Nutgrove.
Skerretts held the office of Mayor, starting with John Skerrett, the 7th Mayor, 1491-92, followed by James Skerrett 1531-1532; William Skerrett 1556-1557; Roland Skerrett 1594-1595; John Skerrett fitz William 1605-1606. Over centuries, they also held most other offices in city governance, sheriff, bailiff and provost.
In the ecclesiastical field too, the Skerretts were to reach high office. Two of them, one in the sixteenth century, and the other two hundred years later, were Archbishops of Tuam. A number of them were vicars of the Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas and Rev. Patrick Skerrett was warden around 1726. He was an old man who had been ordained at Salamanca in 1679. The Mayor in a report on the working of the penal laws in Galway in 1731 stated that Father Skerrett said Mass in his chamber in Skinner Street.
The Skerretts were evicted after the Cromwellian conquest in 1652, as they were catholic royalists, who were active in the defence of the city against the Parliamentary forces. For example, as a successful merchant Edmond Skerrett in 1641 owned substantial property in Galway city this was taken over in the confiscations. Equally he lost the land which he had acquired in the neighbourhood of Headford, Co Galway, to the St. George family. They never regained their city status. It is noticeable that most of the Skerretts who acquired landed interests in that period did so in the Barony of Clare just north of Galway. The family of Edmond Skerrett was to settle at Ballinduff which they purchased around 1688. Another branch was settled in Finnavara on the south side of Galway Bay in Co. Clare. Both of these have now died out in the male line. An offshoot of the family was settled in the nineteenth century at Athgoe Park, Rathcoole, Co. Dublin.
1651 Map: https://galwaycivictrust.ie/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Cantec_Scan-of-1651-map.pdf
Sources Consulted
Books
Dargan, Pat, Galway – City of Heritage, Eastwood Books, Dublin, 2024
Dowd, Peadar, “A Family Heritage in Stone”, Galway Roots- Journal of the Galway Family History Society West, Summer 1993, (pp6-8)
Hardiman, James, Hardiman’s History of Galway, 1820 (reprint, Connacht Tribune 1985)
Larkin, Patrick “SOME TOWN CASTLES OF GALWAY.”Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society 72 (2020): 157–72.
Martyn Adrian, The Tribes Of Galway; 1124- 1642, Galway; Adrian Martyn, 2016
O’Neill T.P., The Tribes and other Galway families, (1984), reprint, Galway Civic Trust, 2013
Prunty, Jacinta; Walsh, Paul, Galway- Irish Historic Town Atlas No 28, Royal Irish Academy, 2016
Walsh, Paul, Renaissance Galway- Delineating the Seventeenth Century City, Royal Irish Academy, 2019
Internet
Welcome to County Galway Guide, ‘’Tribes of Galway”, (2007), https://www.galway-ireland.ie/galway-tribes.htm
