ARCHITECTUREdesign sophistication, but we have no independent test
of the accuracy of such accounts; significantly perhaps,
the timber churches identified in archaeological exca-
vation were simple post-built structures.
Round towers, or cloigtheacha(“bell-houses”), as
the annalists described them, first appeared on church
sites in the tenth century and continued to be built to
the same basic design into the later 1100s. Distinctively
tall, narrow, and elegant, they represent a triumph of
the native mason’s craft in the face of a difficult tech-
nical challenge.
Romanesque
The second half of the eleventh century saw the emer-
gence in western Europe of Romanesque architecture,
a complex stylistic movement with explicit formal and
iconographical references to earlier Roman architec-
ture. Irish church-builders were clearly aware of these
developments, and by 1100 some of the characteristic
elements of the tradition—round arches and barrel
vaults—were beginning to appear there. In the early
twelfth century a distinctively indigenous Romanesque
tradition, borrowing heavily from the chevron-rich
Anglo-Norman Romanesque, developed in Munster,
eventually diffusing across the island by the end of the
century. Churches are the only surviving representatives
of this architectural tradition; given the importance
of secular patronage in church-building, contemporary
high-status residential architecture was also Romanesque.
Cormac Mac Carthaig’s eponymous church at Cashel
(1127–1134) is the most substantial survival, but it
may always have been an exceptional building. Most
of the other churches of the period were of simple plan
and unsophisticated superstructure, their portals and
chancel arches being the only parts embellished with
Romanesque motifs; key works include the portals at
Killeshin (c. 1150) and Clonfert (c. 1180). The Cister-
cians independently introduced their own Burgundian
version of Romanesque into Ireland in the mid-twelfth
century.
The Anglo-Norman invasion did not mark the end
of Romanesque building in Ireland. Rather, there was
a late flowering of the style in Cistercian and Augus-
tinian monastic churches founded in the lands of the
Ua Conchobair kings and their subordinates to the west
of the Shannon. Indeed, the Anglo-Normans them-
selves were more familiar with Romanesque than
Gothic at the time of their arrival, since Gothic was
only starting to take root in England and Wales in the
late twelfth century. The Romanesque transepts of
Christ Church Cathedral, for example, were built by
their masons, while the halls and donjons in a number
of their early castles (Adare, Ballyderown, and Trim,
for example) also belong within the Romanesque tra-
dition of their home territory.Early Gothic
The first building projects in the Gothic style began as
the twelfth century closed, and their patrons were
Anglo-Norman. New Cistercian monasteries with
English mother-houses, specifically the abbeys of Grey
(started after 1193), Inch (started after c.1200), and
Duiske (started after 1204), played an important role in
the dissemination of the style. But the critical buildings
were probably the cathedral churches in Dublin (the
nave of Christ Church; St. Patrick’s in its entirety) and
the now-lost cathedral in Waterford. Key elements of
what is called “Early English” Gothic, such as pointed
lancet windows and “stiff-leaf” capitals, were on dis-
play in these buildings during the early thirteenth cen-
tury. The masons who worked on these projects were
trained in the west of England, the region from which
many Anglo-Norman settlers in Ireland had come.
Gothic church-building in the Early English style
spread rapidly through the lordship in the first half of
the thirteenth century, but the projects produced mod-
est results. Relatively few of the new buildings were
aisled or transeptal, or had any internal vaulting; the
exceptions were either cathedral churches in prosper-
ous sees (Newtown Trim, for example), major monas-
tic churches (Athassel, for example), or parish
churches associated with very powerful lords (New
Ross, for example).
In the second half of the thirteenth century the new
friaries of the mendicant orders provided opportunities
for masons to practice their skills, and the general
proposerity of the colony, at least in the third quarterTimahoe Round Tower, Co. Laois. © Department of the
Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Dublin.