Tower houses are most common in a swathe across
Ireland from Galway, Clare, and Limerick in the West
through the Midlands toward Wexford or south Dublin
in the southeast. Ulster and the extreme Southwest have
relatively few; the north Pale or Wicklow also have
fewer than might be expected. Tower houses prolifer-
ated particularly in areas where lordship was disturbed
in the fourteenth century. Within Ireland there are clear
regional types of tower houses: attached towers in the
Pale and southeast Ulster, elaborate roof-level display
in Tipperary and Kilkenny, and plan type in Limerick.
Within each region, however, the towers conform
closely to type, unlike most castles, which emphasize
individual design apparently to stress the owner’s mem-
bership of a particular class. They are often found on
sites that are not known to have been manorial centers
in the thirteenth century, and they appear to be most
common where new lordships were set up, often as a
result of the decline of the earlier thirteenth-century
magnates and the consequent division of their lands, in
some parts. They appear to be sited to profit from the
new economy of pasture and seaborne trade established
after the Black Death. They give a general impression
of a break with the earlier period.
The main builders were of the gentry class; although
a few were built on lesser manors of major lords, they
are not the castles of the great. They provided for a
lifestyle without the trappings of lordship and admin-
istration through a public hall. As such, they were the
first type of castle to have been built widely by Gaelic
Irish lords. Their use in stabilizing control of land and
resources is seen in north Donegal, where the incoming
gallowglass lords, the MacSweeneys, built a number
of towers. It is characteristic that these were castles of
a second-rank Gaelic lord; Maguire, O’Cahan, or Clan-
deboy O’Neills built castles before the great lords, Ua
Néill of Tyrone or Ua Domnaill. This is also seen in
Scotland, where the lords of the Isles built few, if any,
castles, but their chief men—such as Campbell,
MacLean, or MacLeod—did. Below the level of gen-
try, tower houses were also a feature of towns, where
they were the houses of the richer merchants and
wealthier rural priests. Their numbers and cost are
evidence of some real level of prosperity in late medi-
eval Ireland, both in the countryside, profiting from
the shift to cattle economy, and in towns.
T. E. M
C
N
EILL
References and Further Reading
Bradley, J. “The Interpretation of Scandinavian Settlement in
Ireland.” In
Settlement and
Society in Medieval Ireland
,
edited by J. Bradley, 49–78. Kilkenny: Boethius Press, 1998.
Duffy, P., D. Edwards, and E. Fitzpatrick.
Gaelic Ireland
c. 1350–c. 1600
. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001.
Edwards, N.
The Archaeology of Early Medieval Ireland
.
London: Batsford, 1990.
Hurley, M., and O. Scully.
Late Viking Age and Medieval Water-
ford: Excavations 1986–1992.
Waterford: Waterford City
Council, 1997.
Leask, H. G.
Irish Churches and Monastic Buildings
(3 vols.)
Dundalk: Dundealgan Press, 1955–1960.
McCorry, M.
The Medieval Pottery Kiln at Downpatrick, Co.
Down. London: British Archaeological Reports no. 326,
2001.
McNeill, T. E.
Anglo-Norman Ulster
. Edinburgh: John Donald,
1980.
McNeill, T. E.
Castles in Ireland
. London: Routledge, 1997.
Mytum, H.
The Origins of Early Christian Ireland.
London:
Routledge, 1992.
O’Conor, K. D.
The Archaeology of Medieval Rural Settlement
.
Dublin: Discovery Programme/Royal Irish Academy, 1998.
O’Keeffe, T.
Medieval Ireland, an Archaeology
. Stroud: Tempus,
2000.
Stalley, R. A.
Cistercian Monasteries in Ireland
. London & New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.
Sweetman, P. D.
Medieval Castles of Ireland.
Woodbridge:
Boydell, 2000.
See also
Architecture; Castles
TOWNS
See
Villages; Wall TownsTOYS
See
Children; GamesTRADE
Substantive records of trade showing the imports and
exports of medieval Ireland coincide with the estab-
lishment of municipal organization in the later twelfth
and early thirteenth centuries. Archaeology and literary
sources give some indication of the nature of trade in
earlier times. St. Patrick’s Confessio suggests the
export of dogs from Ireland, and wine ships must have
brought that essential commodity to the numerous
monasteries. In the ninth and early tenth century the
Hiberno-Norse craftsmen of the developing port towns
imported huge amounts of silver, which was minted
into coins for trade and fashioned into a variety of
brooches and personal ornaments. The approximately
150 silver hoards unearthed in the countryside suggest
that trade with local Irish lords may have involved
more than food and fuel. Viking Dublin was an impor-
tant link in the international trade of the period, which
involved slaves as well as the more exotic walrus ivory,
amber, and oriental silks.
After the establishment of the Anglo-Norman col-
ony and the setting up of manorial farms in the eastTRADE