The date of the erection of this castle is not exactly known, though it was originally inscribed on a stone over its entrance gateway, which existed in the last century. From the style of its architecture, however, it may be assigned with sufficient certainty to the middle of the sixteenth century, with the exception, perhaps, of the banqueting-hall, which appears to be of a somewhat later age.
While the town of Galway was besieged in 1651 by the parliamentary forces under the command of Sir Charles Coote, the Castle of Aughnanure afforded protection to the Lord Deputy the Marquess of Clanricarde, until the successes of his adversaries forced him and many other nobles to seek safety in the more distant wilds of Connemara. This event is thus stated by the learned Roderick O’Flaherty in 1683:—
“Anno 1651.—Among the many strange and rare vicissitudes of our own present age, the Marquis of Clanricarde, Lord Deputy of Ireland, the Earl of Castlehaven, and Earl of Clancarty, driven out of the rest of Ireland, were entertained, as they landed on the west shore of this lake for a night’s lodging, under the mean roof of Mortough Boy Branhagh, an honest farmer’s house, the same year wherein the most potent monarch of Great Britain, our present sovereign, bowed his imperial triple crown under the boughs of an oak tree, where his life depended on the shade of the tree leaves.”
There are several of the official letters of the Marquis preserved in his Memoirs, dated from Aughnanure, and written during the stormy period of which we have made mention.
The Castle of Aughnanure has passed from the family to whom it originally belonged; but the representative and the chief of his name, Henry Parker O’Flaherty, Esq. of Lemonfield, a descendant in the female line from the celebrated Grania Waille, still possesses a good estate in its vicinity. P.
THE IRISH IN ENGLAND.
NO. 1.—THE WASHERWOMAN.
BY MRS S. C. HALL.
The only regular washerwomen extant in England at this present moment, are natives of the Emerald Isle.
We have—I pray you observe the distinction, gentle reader—laundresses in abundance. But washerwomen!—all the washerwomen are Irish.