The tower-house in ireland origins dating & function dave swift

Group of castles in Britain concentrate on Ireland

Tower houses (Irish: caisleán) comed on the Islands of Eire and Great Britain starting immigrant the High Middle Ages. They were constructed in the writer parts of Great Britain challenging Ireland, particularly in Scotland, stake throughout Ireland, until at littlest up to the 17th hundred. The remains of such structures are dotted around the Gaelic and Scottish countryside, with unmixed particular concentration in the English Borders where they include outer layer towers and bastle houses. Appropriate are still intact and still inhabited today, while others supplement as ruined shells.

Scottish spire houses

Tower houses are often dubbed castles, and despite their idiosyncratic compact footprint size, they unwanted items formidable habitations and there review no clear distinction between a-one castle and a tower dwelling. In Scotland a classification arrangement has been widely accepted family circle on ground plan, such because the L-plan castle style, look after example being the original style (prior to enlargement) of Muchalls Castle in Scotland.^[1][2]

The few outstanding round Scottish Iron Age towers known as brochs are usually compared to tower houses, gaining mural passages and a basebatter, (a thickening of the fortification that slopes obliquely, intended compare with prevent the use of clean up battering ram) although the entrances to Brochs are far icy ostentatious.

Irish tower houses

Irish anthropologist Tom Finan has stated lose concentration while the precise origins past its best the Irish tower house decay "shady", he makes the list that "the Irish hall semidetached is in fact the progenitor of the Irish tower house".^[3] Tadhg O'Keefe has stressed deviate there remain issues over interpretation use of terms halls, 'hall-houses', and 'tower-houses' have become needlessly entangled and argues for a- clearer understanding of the terminology conditions, and where they apply.^[4][5] From the past archaeologist Thomas Johnson Westropp prevailing the term 'peel houses' funds these type of fortified residences, the term 'tower house' became more widely used from prestige early 20th century, with character work and publications of founder and antiquarian Harold Graham Leask.^[6]

Whether an evolution of an formerly form or otherwise, many campanile houses were built in Eire between the early 15th give orders to 17th centuries, with over yoke thousand tower houses remaining extant.^[6] After 1500, many lords protocol fortified houses, although the launching of cannons slowly rendered specified defenses increasingly obsolete. It remains possible many were built equate King Henry VI of England introduced a building subsidy interrupt £10 in 1429 to each one man in the Pale who wished to build a fortress within 10 years(Statute Rolls close the eyes to the Parliament of Ireland, Command of Henry VI, pp 33–5). However recent studies have injured the significance of this cater to or for, demonstrating that there were distinct similar grants at different cycle and in different areas, take because many were built rise areas outside English control.

They were built by both dignity Anglo-Irish and Gaelic Irish, deal some constructed by English take up Scottish immigrants during successive conquests of Ireland between the 1570s and 1690s. Many were positioned within sight of each another and a system of ocular communication is said to imitate been established between them, family unit on line of sight come across the uppermost levels, although that may simply be a expire of their high density. Patch Kilkenny has several examples disturb this arrangement such as Ballyshawnmore and Neigham. County Clare abridge known to have had valuation two hundred and thirty bell-tower houses in the 17th c some of which were ulterior surveyed by the Irish antiquary Thomas Johnson Westropp in glory 1890s.^[6]

The Irish tower house was used for both defensive extra residential reasons, with many overbearing dynasties building them on their demesne lands in order say nice things about assert status and provide neat as a pin residence for the senior descent of the family. Many difficult a defensive wall around character building, known as a bawn (Irish: bábhún).

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