Castle Hackett

Castlehacket

Caisleán an Haicéadaigh
Location	County Galway, Ireland
Coordinates	53.4891°N 8.9695°W / 53.4891; -8.9695
Part of	Ancient Gaelic Kingdom of Maigh Seola
History
Founded	13th century[1]
Abandoned	18th century

Castle Hackett is a 13th-century tower house at the base of Knockma hill, 10 kilometres (6 mi) south-west of Tuam, in the parish of Caherlistrane, County Galway, Ireland.

History

The tower house was built by the Hacketts, a Norman family. The Kirwans, one of the tribes of Galway, settled there in the 15th century. The Castlehacket branch of the family was established in the mid-17th century by Sir John Kirwan. The castle was abandoned in the 18th century and the Kirwans built a new three-storey house nearby. This house, known as Castlehacket House, was burned in 1923 during the Civil War but was subsequently rebuilt.[1]

In the introduction to his Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888), William Butler Yeats mentions the family and Castlehacket, writing, "Each county has usually some family, or personage, supposed to have been favoured or plagued [with fairy-seeing abilities], especially by the phantoms, as the Hackets of Castle Hacket, Galway, who had for their ancestor a fairy…"[2]

See also

• Tower houses in Britain and Ireland
• Norman Ireland

References

1. "Hackett Castle". visitgalway.ie. Retrieved 11 December 2024.
2. Yeats, W.B. (1983). Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland. Macmillan Publishing Company. p. 4. ISBN 0-02-055640-3.

Bibliography

• O'Flaherty, Roderic (1846). A Chorographical Description of West Or H-Iar Connaught, Written A.D. 1684, p. 148, at Google Books.
• Spellissy, Sean (1999). The History of Galway.
• Salter, Mike (2004) "The Castles of Connacht")
• Lynch, Ronan (2006). The Kirwans of Castlehackett.

External links

• Castlehackett National School