beginning of the sixteenth century. The entrance gatehouse remains, with a round arch and a barrel-vault; other buildings occupy three sides of a courtyard, with towers at the corners; the fourth tower has been rebuilt, and most of the curtain wall is now occupied by modern buildings. Part of the wall of enceinte remains, and incloses a large outer bailey; and one of the round towers at the corner is of large dimensions, and pierced with embrasures for cannon.
Strongford Castle, near Athenry, co. Galway, is a small house or fortress of only two stories, with a vault between. The walls are thick, the rooms small, and the work very rude and rough, but the arrangement does not appear to be early; and whatever architectural character there is belongs to the sixteenth century; but it may possibly have been originally of the fifteenth, much altered in the sixteenth. The entrance is protected by the usual inner porch, and had a portcullis, of which the groove remains. There is a large fireplace in the room on the first floor, and a garderobe from the staircase; the doorway of this room looks early, and has the shouldered lintel; there is a cruciform loophole on this floor. The windows are chiefly small square-topped loops. There are bartizans projecting from two of the angles, of rubble-work on plain corbels, with small round and square holes for musketry and culverins.
The town of Galway has many houses of the Elizabethan period, but most of them have been newly fronted and modernised. One of the tower gatehouses remains near the river, but in a ruinous state, and so plain that it may be of any period from the twelfth century downwards; it is probably late. There are two low round arches, with remains of rooms over them, and a stair-turret by the side, which has a single-light window with a trefoil head, very similar to many others of the fifteenth century in the Irish castles.
The best house in the town is the one called Lynch Castle, which was the residence of the great family of that name, but has been entirely rebuilt within the last few years; fortunately the architect employed to commit this piece of barbarism had sufficient taste to preserve as much of the old carved stonework as possible, and built it in again as ornament in the face of the wall, but with little regard to its original position or use. This carved work is extremely beautiful, and admirably executed in the hard limestone of the country; but it is of the very latest Gothic character, and thoroughly Irish; the idea of its being of Spanish character is a mere fancy. Amongst the ornaments built in on the face of the wall are the royal arms of England, with the greyhound and dragon for supporters; these supporters were used occasionally by
