Another angle on the entrance to Portumna Castle.

A front-facing shot of Portumna Castle. From the informational DVD on display at the castle, the outer walls of the castle would have been painted white and the cornerstones painted a dark, possibly black colour.

Although the entire downstairs is now completely open-plan thanks to changes made by a devastating fire in 1826, it once would have been panelled all the way down, creating a hallway with two large rooms to either side. A staircase at the bottom of the entrance hall would have led to the upper floors.

The boys and I have just come back from a short trip to Galway. On the second day we stopped off at Portumna, a quite little town that Lisa and I discovered on a Shannon cruise about 9 years ago.

Portumna Castle was built around 1618 by the de Burgo family and provided quite nice lodgings for them until in burned to the ground some 200 years later. No word as to whether the fire of 1826 was started accidentally or otherwise, but it left the house devastated and roofless.