Landmark · Galway city

Lynch's Castle

The grey stone building with the carved front on Shop Street is a castle, or as near as a merchant family got to one inside a walled town: Lynch's Castle, Caisleán an Linsigh, the fortified townhouse of the Lynches. Of all the houses the Tribes of Galway built, only this and Blake's Castle survive, and this one you can walk into, because it is a branch of AIB.

Checked against the source on 2026-09-19.

Lynch's Castle in Galway
Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Lynch's Castle on the 3D model; tap a pin for its page and directions.

The Lynches' house

The castle is thought to date from the fifteenth or early sixteenth century, when the Lynch family were the most powerful of the fourteen merchant families who ran the town. The coat of arms of Henry VII is carved on the facade, a sign of where the family's loyalties lay. Originally the building rose five storeys; in 1820 the floor levels were rearranged and Georgian windows were cut into the old walls, which is why the front mixes medieval carving with sash windows.

From family home to bank

In 1918 Nellie Burke, born Kirwan, let the castle to the Munster and Leinster Bank, and in 1920 she sold it to them together with some land beside it known as the French Property. In the 1960s the bank manager Frank Dorgan had the masonry cleaned and repointed and added an extension on Abbeygate Street. When Allied Irish Banks bought the Munster and Leinster in 1966 the premises passed to AIB, and it has traded under that name ever since.

Seeing it

The castle stands on the west side of Shop Street at the corner of Abbeygate Street, a few minutes' walk down from Eyre Square. The carvings are on the outside, so there is nothing to pay and nothing to book; the banking hall inside keeps the bank's hours. The pin on the model marks the building, and the page for the AIB branch has its hours.

Questions people ask

Can you go inside Lynch's Castle?

Yes, during banking hours, because it is an AIB branch; the carved front, with the arms of Henry VII, is visible from Shop Street at any time.

How old is Lynch's Castle?

It is assumed to have been built in the fifteenth or early sixteenth century; the windows and floor levels were changed in 1820.

Who were the Lynches?

One of the fourteen Tribes of Galway, the merchant families who dominated the town's trade and politics from the thirteenth century.

Written from Wikipedia, "Lynch's Castle" (CC BY-SA 4.0), read on 2026-09-19, and from the OpenStreetMap places on the model. Nothing has been added from memory; follow the source for its footnotes.