Historic Sites in Ireland: Explore Passage Tombs, Castles and Monasteries
Explore more than 200 historic sites in Ireland, including Norman castles, tower houses, medieval churches, monastic ruins and prehistoric passage tombs. Castles form the largest group in the collection. Examples in the Boyne valley, beside Lough Leane, at Cashel and along the Shannon introduce defended residences, stone burial chambers and the churches and cloisters of religious communities.
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Fiddaun Castle is a mid-sixteenth-century O’Shaughnessy tower house near Tubber in County Galway, with a well-preserved enclosing bawn wall and a…
Glendalough is a sixth-century monastic settlement in County Wicklow, founded by Saint Kevin and developed into a major center of Celtic…
St Mary's Cathedral in Tuam traces its history to an early Christian foundation and the twelfth-century establishment of Tuam as an archiepiscopal…
Carrigaphooca Castle is a fifteenth-century fortified tower house built for the MacCarthys of Muskerry. Its position, repeated attacks, and surviving…
Killaloe Cathedral developed from an eleventh-century bishopric and was built in its present form between the late twelfth and early thirteenth…
St Laserian's Cathedral stands on the site of an early Christian monastery founded in the seventh century and preserves a medieval Gothic core, later…
Ballinacarriga Castle is a sixteenth-century tower house in County Cork, associated with the O’Hurley family, later confiscated by the English…
Ballinlough Castle is a historic country house in County Westmeath, associated with the O’Reilly and Nugent families and expanded during the late…
Ballymalis Castle is an early sixteenth-century tower house in County Kerry, built by the Ó Muircheartaigh family and later altered by successive…
Dangan Castle was a Wesley and Wellesley family estate in County Meath, later associated with Arthur Wellesley and Roger O’Connor. Fire, legal…
Kilfenora Cathedral and Crosses preserves a late-twelfth-century cathedral, earlier church fabric, medieval tombs, and a group of high crosses…
Lea Castle near Portarlington developed from a timber stronghold into a stone medieval castle held by the FitzGeralds and contested in repeated…
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On this page5 sections
Castles and tower houses
Trim Castle stands above the Boyne in County Meath. Its great tower has an unusual cruciform plan with twenty corners and three storeys. The de Lacy family developed it through several late-twelfth- and early-thirteenth-century campaigns. Around it, curtain walls, towers and gateways define a large enclosure, with different tower forms marking successive defensive works.
Ross Castle beside Lough Leane in County Kerry is a more compact late-medieval tower house. Built for the O’Donoghue clan, it was enclosed by a defensive courtyard, or bawn. Its entrance used an iron grille, a reinforced oak door and an overhead opening from which intruders could be attacked. The concentration of these barriers at a small entrance suited a residence whose rooms were stacked within one principal tower.
Cathedrals, chapels and round towers
The Rock of Cashel preserves a group of medieval religious buildings on a limestone outcrop. Although associated with the kings of Munster, its surviving architecture is predominantly ecclesiastical. A round tower, Cormac’s Chapel and the cathedral occupy the walled summit.
Cormac’s Chapel is a compact Romanesque church with a nave, chancel and two square towers. Carved doorways, arcading and stone vaults provide substantial detail within the small building. Nearby, the round tower has a raised doorway well above ground level. The separate structures allow the site’s medieval phases to be read across the plateau rather than within one continuously enlarged church.
Monasteries and cloister ruins
Clonmacnoise developed where an important overland route crossed the Shannon. Its surviving complex includes cathedral and church ruins, round towers, high crosses and carved grave slabs. Temple Finghín joins a Romanesque church directly to a round tower, an unusual arrangement within the group. Other buildings stand separately among the burial grounds.
Sligo Priory, commonly called Sligo Abbey, preserves a Dominican church and three sides of its cloister. The roofless church retains a tower carried over the main axis on tall pointed arches. Remains of the chapter room, refectory and dormitories place the church within a communal complex. The arrangement gives more emphasis to the cloister and its adjoining rooms than the dispersed churches at Clonmacnoise.
Prehistoric tombs and burial chambers
Brú na Bóinne is a group of prehistoric monuments within a bend of the River Boyne. Its large burial mounds form part of a wider landscape of passage tombs, standing stones and enclosures.
Newgrange, one of the principal monuments within the complex, has a long passage leading to a chamber with three side recesses. Overlapping courses of stone form its corbelled roof, enclosing the chamber without a conventional arch. Stone basins within the recesses were associated with burial deposits. Decorated kerbstones surround the mound, carrying geometric motifs around the base of the structure. These features preserve both the building method and the treatment of its burial spaces.
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