Qualla: Glencastle

Glencastle: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Comhar, Public domain. After miles of brown moor between Crossmolina and Bangor, the road dips. The antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp described the moment in 1912, and his words still match the experience: you 'suddenly dip into a stream runnel and, without preparation, drop into a lovely wooded glen, at first so narrow that there is barely room for the road and the brook.' This is Glencastle, the Gates of Erris, the only gentle place between the bare bog and the windswept Mullet beyond. In the middle of the valley a grassy moat-like mass of rock rises 90 feet above the stream. This is Dun Donnell, the fort of Domhnall, and the story attached to it is older than written Irish.

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Image: Comhar | Public domain

Glencastle: The Toll-Keeper of Erris

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0. Glencastle takes its name from the fort that sits at its heart. The fort is called Dun Donnell, or the fort of Domhnall, and Domhnall belonged to the Gamanraige, a mythological warrior tribe of Connacht in the Ulster Cycle. He was an ascendant of Ailill Finn, the husband of the g...

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Image: N Chadwick | CC BY-SA 2.0

Glencastle: Westropp's Glen

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit C Michael Hogan, CC BY-SA 2.0. Thomas Johnson Westropp, an antiquarian who toured Erris in the early twentieth century, left the best description of what Glencastle feels like when you reach it. After the dreary moors, he wrote, you pass 'a regular brown dyke of volcanic rock and a thickly-wooded hillside, hov...

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Image: C Michael Hogan | CC BY-SA 2.0

Glencastle: Old Stones and Lost Stones

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CeltBrowne, CC BY-SA 4.0. Glencastle townland holds more than its central fort. The official record lists several ring forts and cairn sites, the kind of small Bronze Age and Iron Age monuments that dot the west of Ireland in numbers most visitors never notice. A larger megalithic structure once stood her...

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Image: CeltBrowne | CC BY-SA 4.0

Glencastle: The Barretts of Inver

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Comhar, Public domain. After the early Christian period, the Clan Barrett took possession of these lands. They held them for about two centuries. The Barrett family produced a Bishop of Elphin and a Baron of Irrus, the old Latinate name for Erris, and the variation of the castle's Irish name reflects t...

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Image: Comhar | Public domain