of the century, provided favorable conditions for the
building industry in general. Yet the period was marked
by a rather unimaginative consolidation of the Early
English style rather than any concerted attempt to keep
pace with the increasingly elaborate Gothic work in
contemporary England. But some building projects of
the early fourteenth century (Athenry and Fethard fri-
ary churches, for example) featured traceried windows
in the so-called Decorated style of contemporary
English Gothic, and these works, few though they are,
certainly undermine any assertion that Ireland was too
war-torn in the early 1300s to have accommodated
serious architectural endeavours.
Late Gothic
Levels of political patronage of architecture in the
fifteenth century surpassed those of the thirteenth
century. Projects of the era, ecclesiastical and secular,
were also more widespread geographically, embrac-
ing areas that were under “Irish” and “English” polit-
ical control. The architectural details of this late
Gothic phase were derived largely from English sty-
listic traditions: Elements of the early-fourteenth-
century Decorated style still remained, but were now
augmented with elements from the so-called Perpen-
dicular style, which was popular in contemporary
England. Impulses from the latter tradition are espe-
cially evident in the Pale, not least in the three famous
Plunkett family churches of Dunsany, Killeen, and
Rathmore.
The fifteenth-century projects included additions to
or partial rebuildings of many of the existing cathedrals,
abbeys, priories, and friaries, as well as brand-new
mendicant friaries of exceptional architectural merit in
western Ireland (Rosserk and Moyne, for example).
Patrons’ investment in their own home comfort and
outward display are represented by new tower-houses
and other forms of castle, the doorways, windows, and
battlemented parapets of which often parallel those in
ecclesiastical buildings. Most of Ireland’s medieval
parish churches—the buildings most neglected by
architectural historians—were substantially altered in
the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and very
many seem to have been rebuilt.
TADHGO’KEEFFE
References and Further Reading
Craig, Maurice. The Architecture of Ireland from the Earliest
Times to 1880. London: Batsford, 1982.
O’Keeffe, Tadhg. Romanesque Ireland: Architecture and ideol-
ogy in the 12th century. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003.
Hourihane, Colum. Gothic Art in Ireland 1169–1550: Enduring
vitality. Yale: Yale University Press, 2003.
Leask, Harold G. Irish Churches and Monastic Buildings.
3vols. Dundalk: Dundalgan Press, 1955–1960.
Stalley, R. “Irish Gothic and English Fashion.” In The English
in Medieval Ireland, edited by James Lydon. Dublin: Royal
Irish Academy, 1984.
See alsoAbbeys and Religious Houses; Castles;
Christ Church Cathedral; Church Reform, Twelfth
Century; Ecclesiastical Sites; Mac Carthaig,
Cormac; Parish Churches, Cathedrals; St. Patrick’s
Cathedral; Tower Houses; Walled TownsARMAGH
Armagh (Ard Macha) became the ecclesiastical capital
of Ireland in the middle ages, its status based on its
supposed associations with Patrick.Prehistory
Historians have been tempted to associate Armagh’s
emergence as Ireland’s premier Christian center with
a pre-Christian cultic legacy reflected by a sizable col-
lection of stone carvings at Armagh, though the prov-
enance of some of the stones is poorly documented
and certainty about their origins is elusive. At nearby
Emain Macha, named after the same goddess as
Armagh, archaeologists excavated a major religious
structure dating to circa 95 B.C.E.Patrick
Annals claim that Patrick founded a church at
Armagh in 444, but those annals were written retro-
spectively and are unreliable. In fact, apart from his
Confessionand his Letter to Coroticus, no documents
survive from Ireland in Patrick’s time, and neither
composition associates him with Armagh. The Book
of Armagh, written in 807, incorporates the earliest
records to connect Patrick with Armagh: the Book of
the Angel, written about 640 to 650; a catalogue of
“Patrician” churches compiled by Bishop Tírechán
circa 670; and a Life of Patrickcomposed by Muirchú
maccu Machthéni in the 680s or 690s, though based
upon earlier records.
Muirchú claimed that Patrick’s church was not
founded on the hilltop at Armagh, where the Church
of Ireland cathedral stands, but lower down the hill at
Templenaferta. Excavations at that site uncovered a
series of burials dating from circa 420–685 C.E., estab-
lishing it as a very early Christian foundation. Exca-
vations nearby uncovered evidence of a substantial
ditch, which surrounded the hilltop in the fifth century.
That suggests that the church at Templenaferta was
founded beside a secular power center at Armagh in
the early fifth century. However, there is no independentARCHITECTURE