This was a place the crown's writ had not reliably reached, where sheriffs thought twice before entering and where the ordinary machinery of law simply did not function. The structure known as the Ordnance Ground barrack, raised around 1761 somewhere eight to ten miles into the interior from Galway town, was the physical consequence of that failure.

The sequence of events that produced it was recorded in a letter written in 1761 by Edward Willes, the Lord Chief Baron, to the Earl of Warwick, as part of a report on the Connacht circuit. Willes describes how Usher St. George, a Galway landowner, held a large tract within Eyre Connaught whose tenants had been paying modest acknowledgements but refused to renew their leases when the terms expired. Their position was backed by Morgan O'Flaherty, one of the old Gaelic chiefs, who claimed the land as his own. St. George took the matter through the courts, won his ejectment action, and then discovered that legal victory and actual possession were two entirely different things. When a sheriff arrived with a posse to enforce the judgement, they were routed. Three companies of foot soldiers were then deployed alongside the sheriff, and possession was formally handed over to St. George, but the moment the troops withdrew, O'Flaherty's people returned, expelled whoever had been left on the land, burned the houses, and left the estate in waste. The Duke of Bedford, serving as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland between 1755 and 1761, concluded that the situation amounted to a direct challenge to the authority of the state. His response was to order the construction of a permanent barrack deep in the territory, with a road built out from Galway to supply it. While the barrack was going up, one hundred soldiers from the Galway garrison rotated out each week to protect the labourers. Willes, writing with the confidence of a man who believed roads and garrisons could settle any question, predicted that once further routes were cut through Eyre Connaught, the region would be brought to heel.