The village
Menlo (Irish: Mionlach, ‘small lake’) is a Gaeltacht village and townland on the east bank of the Corrib, close enough to Galway city to be part of it, yet still laid out like the rural clachan it once was: a scatter of cottages along narrow, winding lanes. Its oddest claim to fame is transatlantic. In the late 1800s two emigrants from here are said to have named Menlo Park in California after home – the same Menlo Park that is now Facebook’s headquarters.
A crooked village
Menlo’s documented story runs back to the mid-1800s, when the visiting writer Thomas Campbell Foster described it in his Letters on the Condition of the People of Ireland. He found a rundale settlement of around two thousand people, living off dairy farming and selling milk into Galway, its cottages pitched at every angle along what he called ‘the most crooked, narrow and dirty lane’ he had seen. The lanes still trace those 19th-century lines on the Ordnance Survey maps.
Two things have long held the village together: school and sport. A primary school opened in 1862 and was rebuilt as a modern two-storey Irish-medium school in 2014. On the water and the field, the Emmetts Rowing Club took the Irish Senior Eights Blue Riband in 1929 and 1931, and the Menlo Emmetts GAA club won the All-Ireland Junior B title in 2006–07.
The old Menlo cemetery is worth a mention too. The Blake family gave the ground for it in the early 1800s, and among those buried there are local oarsmen and the storyteller Tomás Leighléis, alongside members of the Blake family themselves.
Menlo Castle
Then the castle. Menlo Castle, known locally as Blake’s Castle, stands over the east bank of the Corrib, its core a tower house of around 1569. Thomas Colman is recorded living here in 1574; the Blake family, one of Galway’s fourteen merchant tribes, took it over around 1600 and held it until 1910. Over those centuries they turned the fortified tower into a country house, adding a Jacobean mansion and later a two-bay, four-storey block with a square turret.
The Blakes were known locally for their hospitality, above all the annual Maying in Menlo festival that filled the grounds each spring with rowing regattas, tennis, music, dancing and games. It ended abruptly. On the night of 26 July 1910, with Sir Valentine and Lady Blake away in Dublin, fire gutted the house and killed their daughter Eleanor and two servants; it was reckoned the worst fire in the west of Ireland in half a century. Only the walls and turret survived. The Land Commission broke up the estate in 1923, and Galway City Council took over the grounds in 2000. Access to the ruin is currently restricted while conservation work goes on, so check before you count on getting close.
What to see and do
- The castle exterior – even with the grounds closed, the ruin reads clearly from outside and from the far bank: the join between the original 16th-century tower and the later Georgian block is easy to pick out under the ivy.
- The Corrib greenway – a flat, traffic-free path on the old Galway–Clifden railway line links Menlo to the city centre, popular with walkers, joggers and cyclists and giving the best straight-on view of the castle from across the water.
- Boat tours – in the warmer months, cruises leave from Woodquay in the city and pass the ruin from the river.
- Wider area – Menlo sits right on the edge of the city, so the Spanish Arch, the Latin Quarter and Eyre Square are a short spin away, with Aughnanure Castle and Kylemore Abbey further west along the Wild Atlantic Way.
Getting there
- By bike or on foot – the Corrib greenway is the pleasant, traffic-free route out from the city, about 20 to 30 minutes.
- By car – head north out of Galway for the village; the castle isn’t signposted, so look for the old gatehouse arch, where a small gate leads down a short, rough track to the ruin. Roadside parking is limited, and the ground can be muddy after rain. The Menlo Park Hotel nearby has its own car park, free for guests.
- By bus or taxi – city buses stop in Menlo village, a few minutes’ walk from the castle; a taxi from the centre takes about ten minutes.
There are no cafés or shops at the castle. The Menlo Park Hotel is the nearest place to eat, and Galway city centre – with all its restaurants and pubs – is roughly a 20-minute walk or 10-minute taxi ride away.
Go late in the afternoon, when the light catches the weathered stone and the river runs flat, and give yourself time to walk or cycle at least part of the greenway before heading back.