Fortification, Townparks, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Military Buildings

Fortification, Townparks, Co. Galway

Along the western bank of the River Corrib, near the spot where Nimmo's Pier now extends into the water, a seventeenth-century fort once stood, and then, at some point, simply ceased to be visible.

No stone, no earthwork, no outline in the grass marks the place today. Its exact position is uncertain. What remains is a name, Rintinane, drawn from the older Irish designation for this particular tongue of land, and a single appearance on a pictorial map of Galway dating to around 1650.

The fort was constructed in 1643, during a period of considerable military anxiety across Ireland, and it did not stand alone. A sister fortification rose on the eastern bank of the Corrib at roughly the same time, the two works together forming a paired defence controlling the river's mouth as it meets Galway Bay. The eastern fort may have closely resembled Rintinane, though what either looked like in detail is now difficult to establish. The c. 1650 pictorial map, one of the more evocative documents of early modern Galway, is the clearest evidence that Rintinane existed at all as a built structure rather than a planned intention. Walsh, writing in 1988, places both forts in the same context but notes the uncertainty around Rintinane's precise location on the ground.

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Pete F
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