Irish round towers ( (singular), (plural); literally 'bell house') are early medieval stone towers of a type found mainly in Ireland, with two in Scotland and one on the Isle of Man. As their name indicates, they were originally bell towers, though they may have been later used for additional purposes.
A tower of this kind is generally found in the vicinity of a church or monastery, with the door of the tower facing the west doorway of the church. Knowledge of this fact has made it possible, where towers still exist, to determine without excavation the approximate sites of lost churches that once stood nearby.
Construction and distribution Surviving towers range in height from to , and to in circumference; that at Kilmacduagh being the highest surviving in Ireland (and leaning out of perpendicular).Alan Van Dine, Unconventional Builders, Doubleday Ferguson, 1977, p. 29, 34 The masonry differs according to date, the earliest examples being uncut rubble, while the later ones are of neatly joined stonework (ashlar). The lower portion is solid masonry with a single door raised two to three metres above, often accessible only by a ladder. Within, in some, are two or more floors (or signs of where such floors existed), usually of wood, and it is thought that there were ladders in between. The windows, which are high up, are slits in the stone. The cap (roof), is of stone, usually conical in shape, although some of the towers are now crowned by a later circle of battlements.
The main reason for the entrance-way being built above ground level was to maintain the structural integrity of the building rather than for defence. The towers were generally built with very little foundation. The tower at Monasterboice has an underground foundation of only sixty centimetres. Building the door at ground level would weaken the tower. The buildings still stand today because their round shape is gale-resistant and the section of the tower underneath the entrance is packed with soil and stones.
The distance from the ground to the raised doorway is somewhat greater than that from the first floor to the second; thus large, rigid steps would be too large for the door. Excavations in the 1990s, revealing postholes, confirm that wooden steps were built. However, the use of ladders prior to the construction of such steps cannot be ruled out.
The towers were probably built between the 9th and 12th centuries. In Ireland about 120 examples are thought once to have existed; most are in ruins, while eighteen to twenty are almost perfect. There are three examples outside Ireland. Two are in eastern Scotland: the Brechin Round Tower and the Abernethy Round Tower, and the other is in Peel Castle on St. Patrick's Isle, now linked to the Isle of Man.
Famous examples are to be found at Devenish Island, and Glendalough, while that at Clondalkin is the only round tower in Ireland to still retain its original cap. With five towers each, County Mayo, County Kilkenny and County Kildare have the most. Mayo's round towers are at Aughagower, Balla, Killala, Meelick and Turlough, while Kildare's are located at Kildare Cathedral (which is high), and also at Castledermot, Oughter Ard, Taghadoe (near Maynooth) and Old Kilcullen. The only known round tower with a hexagonal base is at Kinneigh in County Cork, built in 1014. The round tower at Ardmore, County Waterford, believed to be the latest built in Ireland (c. 12th century), has the unique feature of three string courses around the exterior.John Windele, 'The Round Tower of Ardmore, and Its Siege in 1642', The Journal of the Kilkenny and South-East of Ireland Archaeological Society, New Series, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1856), p. 197.
Purpose
It is likely that the primary reason for the round tower was—as the name cloigtheach indicates—to act as a belfry. The Irish wordPatrick S. Dinneen, An Irish English Dictionary, The Educational Company of Ireland, Dublin, 1927Tomás de Bhaldraithe, English-Irish Dictionary, An GUM, Dublin, 1959 for round tower, cloigtheach, literally meaning bellhouse indicates this, as noted by George Petrie in 1845. The Irish language has greatly evolved over the last millennium. Dinneen notes the alternate pronunciations, cluiceach and cuilceach for cloigtheach. The closely pronounced cloichtheach means stone-house or stone-building. The round tower seems to be the only significant stone building in Ireland before the advent of the Normans in 1169–1171 CE.
University College Dublin Professor of Archaeology Tadhg O'KeeffeIreland's Round Towers: Buildings, Rituals and Landscapes of the Early Irish Church, Tempus 2004 has suggested that the towers were originally high-status royal chapels, citing how two of them (Kells and Duleek) were scenes of regicide. He also suggested that the windows were arranged clockwise to imitate the order of relic-carrying procession from the elevated door to the very top.
Another possible purpose would be for taking shelter during raids. The mostly enclosed top floors and stone rooftops would make for terrible belltowers. The elevated doorway could have had a ladder that would be drawn up during raids, and the thick stone walls could withstand most attacks. Since the doors always face where a church stood, this also adds weight to the theory they were where monks would evacuate to. The oldest reference to a round tower (the one at Slane, see below) records its use as a refuge – however in this case it was burnt by the Vikings, killing everyone inside.
List of Irish round towers
The following is a list of surviving Irish round towers, excluding modern reconstructions.
+PictureLocationCountyProvinceConditionHeightNotesAghadoeKerryMunsterIncompleteAghagowerMayoConnachtIncompleteSecond doorway inserted later at ground levelAntrimAntrimUlsterCompleteBuilt around 10th century.Its main entrance is above the ground, suggesting that it was used as protection. The site of the monastery was burned down in 1147. It is locally known as The Steeple.AghavillerKilkennyLeinsterIncompleteSecond doorway inserted later at ground levelArdmoreWaterfordMunsterCompleteHas three string courses and a noticeable lean ArdpatrickLimerickMunsterIncomplete BarrowThe Round Towers of Ireland by George Lennox Barrow 1979 states that the Down Survey of 1655 marks the site with a tower of 3 stories with a broken top. Fitzgerald and McGreggor writing in 1826 state that it was a fine tower that "fell a few years since". A stump surrounded by rubble from its collapse is all that remains. Barrow speculates that some of the stones from the tower were used to build the nearby wall surrounding the cemetery, including one long with a raised moulding at the top of the entrance that may have been the sill stone from the tower's doorway.ArdrahanGalwayConnachtIncompleteArmoyAntrimUlsterIncompleteBallaMayoConnachtIncompleteSecond doorway inserted probably later at ground levelCastledermotKildareLeinsterComplete to corniceThe conical cap has been replaced with battlements and the tower has been attached to a church (which was built later).ClondalkinDublinLeinsterCompleteStrengthened by a stone buttress, has a stone staircase to the doorway. It is the narrowest known tower with a base diameter of ClonesMonaghanUlsterComplete to corniceClonmacnoiseO'Rourke's TowerMcCarthy's TowerOffalyLeinsterIncompleteCompleteTwo towers a short distance from each otherO'Rourke: full height but capless; has 8 windows at topMcCarthy: attached to a churchCloyne Round Tower CloyneCorkMunsterComplete to corniceThe conical cap has been replaced with battlements. Derry Londonderry UlsterIncomplete Barrow states that a tower known as "The Long Tower" once stood in the city of Derry at the site occupied since 1784–1786 by St Columba's Church, Long Tower The Long Tower was said to have survived the siege of 1689 but seemed to have disappeared. In 2018, the remains of the missing tower were identified in the grounds of Lumen Christi College, as a ruin previously believed to have been a windmill.
The OS of County Londonderry of 1837Ordnance survey of the county of Londonderry By Great Britain. Ordnance Survey, Thomas Colby, Sir Thomas Aiskew Larcom (Gart.) Has the following: