towers round ireland

Lusk Round Tower is all that remains of a monastery, founded in the 6th century by St Macculin.
The attached tower house is of the 16th century origin and contains the Lusk Heritage Centre (see separate record) where there is an interesting exhibition of Fingals medieval churches and a 16th century effigy tomb....

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...

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'....

The founder of the first monastery here was St. Senach who was created Bishop of Aghagower by St. Patrick. The Round Tower, which is preserved up to the fourth floor, has a round-headed doorway. The present ground-floor entrance is modern, and the roof is said to have been struck by lighting. The nearby church was built in the 15th century, but with fragments of an earlier church....

This is an old monastic foundation, ascribed to the early Kerry Saint Lugach. The church in the graveyard was built probably by the Augustinians in the 15th century, though stones from an earlier church are built into its walls. The round Tower is very well preserved, and has a round-headed doorway with an architrave or frame in raised relief around it. Further to the east is a 15th century Abbey....

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...

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...

An early Christian monastery was founded here by St. Colman Mac Lenen who died around 600, but all its buildings were burned in 1137. The cathedral of the present Church of Ireland Diocese was started around 1250, but because of much modernisation, comparatively little of this early church can be seen. The chancel has been heavily modernised; the chancel arch was blocked up in 1705 and removed completely in 1775. The east window was inserted in1856. The Cathedral's most famous Bishop was George...

the church is alleged to have been founded by St. Patrick, but it is more likely that it was his disciple Lughaidh (died 515-16) who founded the monastery. St. Ronan, who cursed Suibhne Geilt and caused him to go mad, was abbot here and died of the great plague in 664. The High King, Aedh Finnlaigh, died here in 876. The monastery was plundered by the Irish in 908, by the Danes in 978 and again by the Irish in 1043. The Round Tower and a High Cross still survive from the old monastery. The...