lynch memorial

The Lynch Memorial is situated near the Church of St Nicholas in the form of a black marble stone over a built-up Gothic doorway. It commemorates the - stern and unbending justice - of James Lynch Fitzstephen, Mayor of Galway in 1493, who found his own son Walter guilty of murdering a Spanish visitor and condemned him to death. When no one could be found to carry out the sentence, so the popular but dubious legend goes, the Mayor hanged his own son before retiring into seclusion.