Castle Taylor, Castletaylor, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

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Castle Taylor, Castletaylor, Co. Galway

At the north-east corner of a roofless country house in south Galway, a tower house dating from around 1500 rises with its stepped crenellations and loop windows still largely intact, pressed against a Georgian wing that was added some two and a half centuries later.

The two elements do not fight each other so much as coexist in a state of productive incongruity, the medieval stonework with its ogee-headed windows and false machicolation over the entrance sitting flush against dressed limestone facades that belong to an entirely different architectural world. What draws the eye further is the evidence of later Gothic Revival intervention, pointed blind windows with intersecting tracery worked into the upper storey of the eighteenth-century portion, as though each successive generation felt compelled to leave its own mark on the fabric.

The complex is associated with the Shawe-Taylor family, who held several properties in the region. The tower house portion, a form common across medieval Ireland in which a fortified stone tower served as the principal residence of a local lord or landowning family, was built around 1500 and retains considerable detail: pyramidal corbels to a moulded sill, elaborate traceried triple-light windows on the north-east elevation, and a caphouse at the north corner. The three-storey central range dates to around 1750, and the slightly advanced four-storey south-west section appears to belong to a later phase again. The house was inhabited as late as 1930, though the late 1920s brought violent incidents to the property. After that, it fell into the ruined state in which it now stands, roofless but with much of its form and masonry surviving. A walled garden and various outbuildings remain to the rear, and entrance gate piers and a lodge mark the approach through the grounds.

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Pete F
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