Castle Hackett is a 13th-century tower house

Tower house

A tower house is a particular type of stone structure, built for defensive purposes as well as habitation.-History:Tower houses began to appear in the Middle Ages, especially in mountain or limited access areas, in order to command and defend strategic points with reduced forces...

 located at the base of Knockma hill

Cnoc Meadha

Cnoc Meadha is a hill west of Tuam, County Galway, in Ireland.It is said in legend to be the residence of Finnbheara, the king of the Connacht fairies. Of two large cairns on the hill, one was thought to be the burial-place of Finnbheara and the other of Queen Medb, whose name may be transformed...

 six miles southeast of Tuam

Tuam

Tuam is a town in County Galway, Ireland. The name is pronounced choo-um . It is situated west of the midlands of Ireland, and north of Galway city.-History:...

, County Galway

County Galway

County Galway is a county in Ireland. It is located in the West Region and is also part of the province of Connacht. It is named after the city of Galway. Galway County Council is the local authority for the county. There are several strongly Irish-speaking areas in the west of the county...

, Ireland

Republic of Ireland

Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...

.

History

It was built by the Hacketts, a Norman family. The Kirwans, one of the tribes of Galway

Tribes of Galway

The Tribes of Galway were fourteen merchant families who dominated the political, commercial, and social life of the city of Galway in western Ireland between the mid-13th and late-19th centuries. They were the families of Athy, Blake, Bodkin, Browne, D'Arcy, Deane, Font, Ffrench, Joyce, Kirwan,...

 settled there in the 15th century. The Castle Hackett branch of the family was established in the mid-17th century by Sir John Kirwan

Sir John Kirwan

Sir John Kirwan, Irish Entrepreneur, founder of the Kirwans of Castle Hackett, County Galway. 1650-1721.-Background:Kirwan was a member of one of The Tribes of Galway. The family were of Gaelic origin, possibly of Conmhaícne descent. They settled in Galway around 1488 under William Ó Ciardhubháin...

. The castle was abandoned in the 18th century and the Kirwans built a new three-story house called Castlehacket which was burned in 1923 during the Civil War but rebuilt and still stands today.

In the introduction to his Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888), William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...

mentions the family and castle Hackett; he writes, "Each county has usually some family, or personage, supposed to have been favoured or plagued [with fairy-seeing abilities], especially by the phantoms, as the Hackets of Castle Hacket, Galway, who had for their ancestor a fairy..." (p. xix)