The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 01, July 4, 1840

THE CASTLE OF AUGHNANURE.
Not many years since there was an extensive district in the west of Ireland, which, except to those inhabiting it, was a sort of terra incognita, or unknown region, to the people of the British isles. It had no carriage roads, no inns or hotels, no towns; and the only notion popularly formed of it was that of an inhospitable desert—the refugium of malefactors and Irish savages, who set all law at defiance, and into which it would be an act of madness for any civilized man to venture. This district was popularly called the Kingdom of Connemara, a name applied to that great tract extending from the town of Galway to the Killery harbour, bounded on the east by the great lakes called Lough Corrib and Lough Mask, and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, and comprising within it the baronies of Moycullen and Ballinahinch, and the half barony of Ross. It is not an unknown region now. It has two prosperous towns and several villages, good roads, and comfortable hotels. “The Queen’s writ will run in it;” and the inhabitants are remarkable for their intelligence, quietness, honesty, hospitality, and many other good qualities; and in the summer months it is the favourite resort of the artist, antiquary, geologist, botanist, ornithologist, sportsman—in short, of pleasure tourists of all descriptions, and from every quarter of the British empire; for it is a district singularly rich in its attractions to all those who look for health and pleasure from a summer’s ramble, combined with excitable occupation. Of its picturesque beauties much has already been written. They have been sketched by the practised hand of Inglis, and by the more graphic pencil of Cæsar Otway; but its history and more important antiquities have been as yet but little noticed, and, consequently, generally passed by without attracting the attention or exciting any interest in the mind of the traveller. We propose to ourselves to supply this defect to some extent, and have consequently chosen as the subject of our first illustration the ancient castle, of which we have presented our readers with a view, and which is the most picturesque, and, indeed, important remain of antiquity within the district which we have described.