GALWAY

Irish Gaillimh seaport and county town (seat) of County Galway, Ireland, on the northern shore of Galway Bay. After the building of its walls by Anglo-Norman settlers (c. 1270), it developed as a commercial centre and had considerable trade with Spain. The charter of incorporation given by Richard II (reigned 137799) was extended in 1545 to give the port jurisdiction over the Aran Islands; it permitted export of all goods except linens and woollens. The town and land within a 2-mi (3-km) radius were established as a county by charter in the reign of James I (160325). The town was captured by Parliamentary forces during the English Civil War and again during the campaigns of William III. There are remains of a Franciscan friary (founded 1296), and the town is the seat of a Roman Catholic diocese. St. Nicholas' Church dates from 1320. University College, founded in 1849 as Queen's College, received a new charter in 1908 as a college of the National University of Ireland. Claddagh, the Irish part of the town in Norman times, is now a suburb. The chief exports are wool, agricultural produce, marble, china, and various metals. The main industries are flour milling, ironworking, and the manufacture of hats, furniture, refrigeration units, computers, electric motors, medical instruments, and sports equipment. A shipping service connects Galway with the Aran Islands, 20 mi (32 km) southwest. Pop. (1981) 37,835. Irish Gaillimh county in the province of Connaught (Connacht), western Ireland. With an area of 2,293 sq mi (5,939 sq km), it is bounded on the north by Mayo and Roscommon and Tipperary, on the east by Roscommon and Offaly, on the south by Clare and Tipperary, and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean. The eastern two-thirds of Galway is part of the Irish central lowland. In the west is Connemara (q.v.), mainly a lowland, with peat bogs, many lakes, heathlands, and uplands such as the Twelve Bens and the Maumturk Mountains, with many summits higher than 2,000 ft (600 m). The descendants of the followers of the Norman Richard de Burgh, who assumed rule of Connaught in the 1230s, became known as the tribes of Galway. The county was given its shire boundaries in the reign of Elizabeth I. After 1652 the land settlement of Oliver Cromwell established a new class of landed proprietors. Galway has the largest Gaelic-speaking element of any Irish county; the Irish college at Spiddal has facilities for those wishing to learn Gaelic. About one-third of the county's people live in towns and villages. Apart from the town of Galway, the towns are small. There are a county council and a county manager; Galway town is a county borough. The living conditions in Connemara are among the hardest in Ireland. Most of the people live on small farms in a coastal belt about one mile wide. In the east, areas of cultivable soil are used for crops or for the rich pastures that often develop in this area of high rainfall. Sheep are kept in large numbers. Rough woodlands, patches of rocky heath, and peat bogs create gaps in the pattern of agricultural settlement. Only a few short streams flow over much of the lowland, but there are numerous shallow depressions called turloughs that provide good pastures in dry periods. Galway produces a black marble and a green-streaked Connemara marble of great beauty. Other industries include boot making in Ballinasloe, cotton spinning in Loughrea, and sugar refining in Tuam. Pop. (1981) 172,018.