towers round ireland

This round Tower, without windows on the top, is 65 feet high and it may never have been completed. there is a flat raised moulding around the round-headed doorway, and an indistinguishable head carved above it. The monastery of which the tower is the sole remnant was founded by an obscure saint named Tua who was attached to the nearby monastery of Clane. Little is known of the history of the monastery except that one of its abbots, named Folachtach, died in 765. The church beside the Round...

St. Colmcille founded a monastery here about 575 on lands given by King Aedh Ainmire. Not far away, at Culderimne, the saint had been heavily involved in a battle in 561 in a dispute over the ownership of a book! The monastery seems to have been well known from the 9th to the 16th century, and was plundered by Maelseachlain O'Rourke in 1187. It was plundered again in 1267 and 1315, and the last known abbot died in 1503.

The Church of Ireland church stands on the site of an older chu...

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 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....

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....

The monastery at Kells would appear to have been first founded in 804 by monks from St. Colmcille's foundation at Iona who were fleeing from the Viking invasions and seeking a safer place for their treasures. In 877 reliquaries of the saint were transferred to Kells. The monastery was raided by the Vikings in 919, 950 and 969.

The greatest treasure of the monastery - the Book of Kells, now in Trinity College, Dublin - which had possibly been written here in the early 9th century, wa...

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....

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...