Clifden Castle
28 September 2018
We stopped quick on the Sky Road yesterday while visiting Clifden, but we only drove up to the viewpoint that looked over the fields and castle below as our sunlight was running out. We’ve never driven the length of it or made our way down to Clifden Castle, so that is on the schedule for today! We started the day with a hearty breakfast for the journey ahead. I’ve always professed my love of the Irish brown bread, and we had a bit leftover so I thought I’d experiment. Irish Brown Bread French Toast... it was scrumptious! We headed out from An Nead along those coastal roads again, skipping the quicker roads for the better view!
We looped around Clifden and headed up the Sky Road. Not too far along we came to this little triangle spot in the road where we could leave the car and hike down to the castle ruins. This little parking area and the castle trail are some of the many things we missed before that we could find this time thanks to more accessible information. Google Maps has a lot more detail than the old paper road atlas for sure! It helped us find this spot, so down to the castle we go!
Clifden Castle is not actually an old fortress like Rockfleet Castle, but rather a large estate home built in the medieval style around 1815 by John D’Arcy, the founder of the town of Clifden. It was lost by the D’Arcy family when the estate went bankrupt during the famine, and eventually fell into the ruin it is today. So... not an ancient castle, and I’m sure John D’Arcy doesn’t have legends that surround him like Grace O’Malley, but Clifden Castle still an architecturally impressive building and a dominant feature of the area. And who doesn’t like exploring ruins?
We walked along the winding trail down the hillside and through the cattle fields to the castle ruins. As you curve around the trail, the impressive stone walls come into view. It looked so much bigger from the ground than it did from Sky Road above! The roof and upper floors were gone (as is the case with most ruins) but most of the walls were still intact, so you could get a general feel of the different rooms and how the castle was laid out. I really liked the pattern on the walls where you could tell there was once a staircase, and the spots in the walls overhead that held the beams to support the upper floors. You can't walk through a place like this without imagining what it was like back in its time! Considering it was an 1800s estate home and not a medieval fortress, I’m sure it was bathed in some of the best luxury of the day!
Around the side of the castle was the ivy-covered wall that we could see from the lookout on Sky Road, a very different perspective for sure! From inside the castle, the ivy climbed high up the walls and covered over some of the openings, dimming out the sunlight. Birds were swooping overhead from their nests in the towers, their calls echoing through the ruin.
As we passed out the back end, we found a trail that led to what looked like additional outbuildings on the property, probably stables or workshops or maybe other quarters. They were also significantly in ruin with dense overgrowth surrounding them and coming up through the buildings themselves. There was a large grassy spot in the middle like a little courtyard or possibly an area for horses. Again, my mind goes wild with imagining how this place had once looked in its prime. For now, with the old inhabitants gone, the grassland around the castle was full of sheep and some odd-looking plants.
But once, this place would have been fancy and luxurious!
