HOUSES
sill-beams with earth-fast roof supports, or to houses
built of stone walls. By the mid-thirteenth century,
fully-framed timber houses emerge.
Houses in Late Medieval Ireland
(1200–1500A.D.)
In the late Middle Ages, there is also a wide range of
archeological and historical evidence for houses of
varying social status, architecture, and function. For
example, both Anglo-Norman masonry castles and
later English and Gaelic Irish tower-houses (variously
dating to between the fourteenth and the seventeenth
centuries) effectively served as impressive domestic
residences for the upper social classes, both in towns
and in the rural landscape. Tower-houses were entered
from a doorway above a basement, with upper floors
lit by windows and fireplaces. These different floors
variously functioned as public spaces for receiving
guests, eating, and daily living, or as private rooms for
bedchambers. They also often had smaller buildings
beside them, for feasting, storage, granaries, stables,
and administration. While there has been a tendency
to view these structures as primarily defensive or mil-
itary in function, more recent studies have suggested
that they be interpreted in terms of estate administra-
tion and domestic life (O’Conor 1998) and as venues
for the performance of gendered, ranked, and ethnic
identities (O’Keeffe 2001).
The houses of the lower social classes in the late
Middle Ages have generally proven more difficult to
identify, largely due to a lack of archeological exca-
vations. Anglo-Norman rectangular stone and earthen
houses dating to the thirteenth and fourteenth century
have been excavated within manorial villages at sites
like Caherguillamore, and Bourchier’s Castle, County
Limerick; Jerpoint Church, County Kilkenny; and
Piperstown, County Louth (O’Conor 1998). These
houses were typically small, rectangular, two-roomed
structures, with one end serving as a cattle byre and
the other as a living area. Houses of the Gaelic Irish
peasantry have proven even more elusive and have
often been thought of as insubstantial structures. Late
medieval and early modern historical documents and
maps describe or depict Gaelic Irish “creats” as small
circular houses of wattle, clay, earth, and branches that
may have been quickly disassembled. There is also
evidence that the Gaelic Irish occupied small sub-
rectangular houses built of stone and earthen walls,with
cruck-trussed roofs, occasionally using them for sum-
mer booleying in the uplands or as ordinary dwellings.
Conclusions
In conclusion, houses remain as key artifacts of medi-
eval societies in Ireland. Studies are still needed to
properly establish the character and development of
houses in the later Middle Ages. It is also likely that
future scholarship will move on from questions of style
and architectural development and inspired by sociol-
ogy and anthropology, to address how houses were
used in the construction and negotiation of social iden-
tities of ethnicity, power, gender, and kinship across
the medieval period.
AIDANO’SULLIVANReferences and Further Reading
Collins, A. E. P. “Excavations at Dressogagh Rath, County
Armagh.” In Ulster Journal of Archaeology29 (1996):
117–129.
Hurley, M. F. and O. M. B. Scully. Late Viking Age and Medieval
Waterford: Excavations 1986–1992 Waterford: Waterford
Corporation, 2000.
Lynn, C. J. “Early Christian Period Domestic Structures: A
Change from Round to Rectangular Plans?” In Irish Archaeo-
logical Research Forum 5 (1978): 29–45.
———. “Deer Park Farms” In Current Archaeology, 113
(1987): 193–198.
———. “Early Medieval Houses.” In The Illustrated Archaeo-
logy of Ireland, edited by Michael Ryan, 126–131. Dublin:
Country House, 1991.
———. “Houses in Rural Ireland,A.D. 500–1000.” In Ulster
Journal of Archaeology57 (1994): 1–94.
O’Conor, K. D. The Archaeology of Medieval Rural Settlement
in Ireland. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1998.
O’Keeffe, T. Medieval Ireland: An Archaeology. Stroud:
Tempus, 2000.
———. “Concepts of Castle and the Construction of Identity
in Medieval and Post-Medieval Ireland.” Irish Geography
34, no. 1 (2001): 69–88.
Ó Ríordáin, S. P. and J. B. Foy. “The Excavation of Leacana-
buile Stone Fort, Near Caherciveen, County Kerry.” In Jour-
nal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society 46
(1941): 85–91.
Wallace, P. F. “Archaeology and the Emergence of Dublin as
the Principal Town of Ireland.” In Settlement and society in
medieval Ireland, edited by John Bradley, 123–160, Kilkenny:
Boethius, 1988.
———. “The Archaeological Identity of the Hiberno-Norse
Town.” Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland
122 (1992): 35–65.
———.The Viking Age buildings of Dublin. National Museum
of Ireland Medieval Dublin Excavations, 1962–1981, series A,
vol. 1. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1992.
See alsoArchitecture; Dublin; Law Tracts;
Manorialism; Ringforts; Society, Grades of Anglo-
Norman; Society, Grades of Gaelic; Tower Houses;
Walled Towns; Villages; Waterford