towers round ireland

Martello towers get their name from a place in Corsica named Mortella where there was a round tower which proved impregnable when attacked by the English in 1794, twenty-six years after Napoleon's birth on the island.

When, in 1804, it looked as if he might turn the tables and invade England, the English built similar towers around the coast of Ireland which, they feared, Napoleon might use as the 'back door' to England. Though the fears proved groundless, the towers still stand as a m...

The church and Round Tower stand on the site of an Early Christian monastery founded by St. Tola who died between 733 and 737. Where the church stands there was a 12th century Romanesque nave-and-chancel church with a plain chancel arch and a wonderfully decorated west doorway above which was an ornamental lancet window. Three narrow lancet windows were inserted in the east gable early in the 13th century.

Some considerable time later the church must have fallen into decay. Possibly...

A three storey 16th century granite tower with a vault over the second. It has parapet machicolations.
Together with the reconstructed Dalkey Tower Hall, further along on the opposite side of the street, it is the last of the seven castellated buildings which once stood in the old walled town of Dalkey....

A fine Round Tower with a round-headed splaying doorway and with flat-headed and pointed windows, but its conical cap is missing. At the foot of the tower is an old Irish cross-slab bearing interlacing ornament and the old Irish inscription OR DO GRICOUR (last two letters doubtful) meaning 'A prayer for Gricour'....

It was possibly St. Comgall of Bangor who founded the first monastery here. The present nave-and-chancel church may have been built or re-built as late as the 16th century, but it incorporates part of an earlier church.

Attached to the south wall of the church are a number of unusual Early Christian decorated slabs. Near the south-west end of the church is the stump of a Round Tower, remains of the old monastic stone wall surround the graveyard.

In a laneway leading down fro...

Round Tower and Crosses: St. Dermot founded a monastery here which was plundered by the Vikings in 841 and again in 867. Cormac Mac Cuilleannain, the famous scholar, King and Bishop of Cashel, was buried here after his head had been cut off in battle in 908. the monastery was plundered in 1048, and the last known abbot of the monastery died in 1073. Between the entrance gate and the church is a reconstructed Romanesque doorway belonging to a vanished church. The Round Tower was built with...

The foundation of the first monastery is attributed to St. Cronan, otherwise called Mo-Chua, who lived possibly in the 6th century. The monastery is first mentioned in 776.
It was plundered by the Vikings in 832. In 1076 the southern half of Ireland demanded the expulsion of O'Ronain from the abbacy as it was claimed that he held it against the rightful abbot.

This probably means that the monastery had fallen into lay hands by that time. The most important remnant of the monaste...

This is a tall and slender 5 storey tower standing in one corner of a bawn and built originally by the MacMahons, Lords of Corcabascin, around the end of the 15th century. The tower is complete with musket holes, 'murder holes' to drop things on intruders' heads when they came in the door and it also has a vault on the 4th floor.

Teige Caech, 'The Short-sighted', Macmahon was unsuccessfully besieged in the tower by Sir Conyers Clifford in 1598, but a few months later the Earl of Thomon...

There is a somewhat doubtful report that the monastery was following the Benedictine rule in the 8th century. The Vikings burned the monastery in 836 and again in 922. Brian Boru is said to have built one of the churches on the island, while his brother, who died in 1009, was Abbot. Around 1043 a monk at Inishcaltra named Anmchad was ordered to leave the monastery because, as Guest-master, he had offered wine to the monastery's guests without the Abbot's permission. He left for Fulda in Germ...

In the 17th and 18th centuries Kinsale was an important English naval base. This is reflected in the architecture of the town which, with its 18th century flavour and a whiff of the distant southern shores reached by its mariners, makes Kinsale into the town with what, in my opinion, is the most individual character in the country. In the town and its surroundings are some interesting monuments. St. Multose Church: The present Church of Ireland Parish church, founded probably by de Cogan...