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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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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