Clifden Castle

Clifden Castle
Clifden Castle
Location within Ireland
General information
Location	Clifden, County Galway, Ireland
Coordinates	53°29′30″N 10°03′24″W / 53.49178°N 10.05673°W / 53.49178; -10.05673
Construction started	around 1815
Completed	c. 1818
Client	John D'Arcy

Clifden Castle is a ruined manor house west of the town of Clifden in the Connemara region of County Galway, Ireland. It was built c. 1818 for John D'Arcy, the local landowner, in the Gothic Revival style. Uninhabited after 1894 it fell into disrepair. In 1935, ownership passed to a group of tenants, who were to own it jointly, and it quickly became a ruin.

John D'Arcy (1785–1839), founder of Clifden, had this house constructed for himself and his family even while he was busy building up the town. The Castle dates from around 1818 and served as the main dwelling of the large D'Arcy family for the next decades. The land surrounding it was among the first drained and reclaimed in the Clifden area by D'Arcy.

In 1839, John D'Arcy died and his oldest son, Hyacinth, inherited the estate. However, Hyacinth (1806?–1874) was not as adept as his father at running the family properties and at dealing with his tenants. More disastrously, in 1845 the famine struck. Hunger, starvation and fever incapacitated large numbers of people as the potato crop failed. In desperation, many emigrated. As a consequence, rent income of the D'Arcy's plunged. On 21 September 1846, Hyacinth D'Arcy's tenants gathered en masse on his front lawn, begging for work or food.

In the end, the D'Arcy estate went bankrupt and Clifden was one of several D'Arcy properties put up for sale on 18 November 1850. Thomas and Charles Eyre, brothers from Bath, bought the Castle, most of the town and surrounding lands for 21,245 pounds. They had been the mortgagees of the estate since 1837, shortly before John D'Arcy's death.

The Eyre family used the Castle as a holiday home. In the 1850s, a new roof was added and the facade altered to suit the taste of the new owners. Thomas Eyre eventually bought Charles' share and on 16 July 1864, two years before his own death, gave the Castle and the Clifden estates as a present to his nephew, John Joseph Eyre of Saint John's Wood, London.

The Eyre family were absentee landlords, but used Clifden Castle through John Joseph's death on 15 April 1894. After his death, a trust was set up to administer his estate, which included considerable holdings in Britain and elsewhere. The trust ran the estates and John Joseph's six children and their descendants received the income from them. There was no individual owner of the Demesne after 1894, running the Clifden estate was left to agents. The Castle fell into disrepair, the Demesne was leased out for grazing to locals as attempts by the agents to sell the property were unsuccessful. All lands except the Demesne were eventually purchased by the Congested Districts Board or later the Land Commission.