Every now and then I republish one of Robert’s classic pieces. This one is from five years ago. We were both fascinated by the West Cork landscape and, being Robert, he wanted to get under the skin of it all. So what follows is his exploration of what makes West Cork, well, West Cork.
West Cork Rocks, by Robert, from 2021
It certainly does! But this post is – literally – about rock: the hard, knobbly kind that is underneath us, surrounds us, and which has historically built our environment. In the picture above, taken on a clear February day during the most severe Covid lockdown, Finola is walking through beautiful West Cork. Beyond her is the great, gaunt outcrop of Mount Gabriel. Beside her is a traditional stone wall: its design unchanged over centuries. In the landscape all around her are rocks – large and small – scattered in the rough pasture.
In the distance, of course, is the coast: there are very few places in West Cork where you cannot, at least, catch a glimpse of the sea – and so many where you can immerse yourself in it, or stand on its shore and admire the infinite textures which those same rocks display. It’s mostly Old Red Sandstone: that’s the correct geological term. It was laid down in the Devonian period – a while ago now: between 400 and 300 million years, in fact. This followed an era during which our mountains were built, known as the Silurian times. Continents were shifting and separating, and what was to become Ireland was a great arid desert – deserted: there was no-one around to see it!
Old Red Sandstone: in fact it varies in colour depending on its local history. Broadly, some of the mountain rocks are purple-grey, while those closer to the sea could be greeny-red, but that is probably far too wide a generalisation. The sheer beauty is in the infinite shapes and colours. What artist needs any finer palette?
In those deserted times, an ‘Old Red Sandstone Continent’ extended over what is now northwest Europe, but it is worth noting that in ‘our’ part of it – the Munster Basin, covering today’s Kerry and Cork – we have one of the densest masses of this rock in the world: at least 6 kilometres thick. And we have to appreciate what it has given to us – high mountain spines sweeping steeply down to an indented shoreline of coves, creeks and inlets, with the myriad mottled islands that we oversee. An unparalleled, unfolded world.
After the ‘desert’ period, but much later – only about a million and a half years ago – came the Pleistocene Epoch. the word is from the Greek pleistos and kainos – meaning ‘most recent’ – and that brings us almost up to date. That was a time of great climate events: deserts were inundated and then covered in ice sheets 3 kilometres thick, while moving glaciers tore up the rock surfaces, advancing and retreating several times. Eventually, what had been desert became arctic tundra. It is supposed that the ancestors of our present day life forms happened along during this epoch, and managed to survive. But we don’t find any traces of them until after the last ice sheet retreated in our part of the world – only about 12,000 years ago. The landscape that was left behind was inundated by rising sea levels, and the very last land bridge (between Cornwall and the eastern tip of Wexford) was washed away after that, but not before the Giant Elk and its mammal relations had got a foothold on the western side. The snakes, however, didn’t make it. And what of the humans?
Well, the humans embraced the rocky landscape. They made their marks on the outcrops; then they moved the rocks about, and made architecture from them. We can still see their efforts, some 5,000 years later.
These Neolithic carved motifs could be the earliest human interventions on the natural Irish landscape: they might date from 3,000 BC. These examples are from West Cork, and were only discovered a few years ago. Finola wrote the definitive thesis on Rock Art when she studied at UCC in the 1970s, and we have staged exhibitions and given talks on the topic.
A couple of thousand years later, Irish people started to build things with the stones they found around them. This wedge tomb under the backdrop textures of Mount Gabriel at Ratooragh has rested here since the Bronze Age. Finola’s post today uncovers the fascinating folklore stories that generations have told about such artefacts. But restlessly working the fabric of the landscape – Old Red Sandstone – into walls, shelters, tower houses, temples and towns has never ceased.
A painting by Edith Somerville* is the subject of this week’s detective story – we know it is a West Cork stone circle – but which one? [See the end of the post for the proper citation for the painting.] In a recent piece in the Irish Arts Review, Michael Waldron, Curator of Collections & Special Projects at the Crawford, wrote about Edith Somerville as a painter. We are so used to thinking of her as a writer, especially in her collaboration with her cousin, Violet Martin, (they wrote as Somerville and Ross), that we forgot that she was also an accomplished artist (and a Master of the Foxhounds, as in this portrait).
She had trained in Dusseldorf and Paris. The DIB entry says
In the second half of the 1880s she was active as a professional illustrator for the Lady’s Pictorial and the Graphic, later illustrating some of her own prose and that written in collaboration. She had exhibitions at the Goupil Gallery in London (1920), Walker’s Gallery, London (1923, 1927), and the Ackermann Galleries, New York (1929).
Edith’s favourite brother was Boyle, about whom I have written here and here. Boyle had gone to sea at the early age of 13, eventually rising up to become a Vice-Admiral. He had, in retirement, come back to live in Castletownshend in 1924.
He was an experienced surveyor and had become fascinated by archaeology, and particularly the investigations of the astronomer, Norman Lockyer, who had established the solar orientation of several ancient monuments around the world and had shown that the stone circles of Scotland were oriented towards celestial events such as solstices or towards bright stars. These stone circles were very similar to West Cork stone circles, in that they had recumbents and portals, establishing the alignment of the circle. Boyle had done the first accurate survey of the Callanish Stone Circle (below)*, before he turned his attention to West Cork.
Edith accompanied Boyle on many of their expeditions, as she had when they were children. While he was busy with his chains and theodolites, she set up her easel and sketched or painted. One of the paintings she produced was titled A Holy Place of the Druids or Grave of a Chieftain. This painting, which Michael used in his article for the Irish Arts Review, is in the possession of the Crawford Art Gallery, and I have been given permission to reproduce it for this blog post. It is my lead image, and below is a detail showing her signature.
In chatting with Michael about his article, I discovered that the monument she had painted had not been identified. Some were convinced it was Drombeg Stone Circle, while others thought it might be the one in Reenascreena. I was pretty sure I knew which one it was, but told him I wanted to visit the site to be sure to be sure, before I committed myself.
The site I had in mind was Bohonagh (above), one of the stone circles Boyle surveyed for his paper Five Stone Circles, in the 1930 edition of the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society. The thing is, it doesn’t look now the way it did when Edith painted it, so unless you knew why this was, you were unlikely to see it as the subject of her painting. Here is Boyle’s plan of the monument as he surveyed it.
And here is the photograph that accompanies that article taken from behind the recumbent, looking towards the portals. Both the plan and the photograph show 6 erect stones.
Bohonagh Stone Circle was excavated by Edward Fahy in 1959. The report of his excavation was published asA Stone Circle Hut and Dolmen at Bohonagh, Co. Cork, in 1961, in the same journal in which Boyle had described the monument 30 years before. In that report, Fahy describes how he re-erected three orthostats for which the evidence was clear, in the form of the stones themselves, now fallen forwards, and their sockets (the cross-hatched stones in the plan below). So now, instead of six orthostats, as depicted in Boyle’s photograph, there are 9 tall stones.
He also, as he had at Drombeg, placed shorter ‘marker stones’ to indicated the positions of missing orthostats. Although he did not document it in the text of his report, we can see the marker stones clearly in his photograph below. The Bohonagh Stone Circle, therefore, now has the full complement of all 13 of its stones, with no signage at the site to help the visitor identify the differences between all those standing stones.
A few weeks ago I went out there with my friend Adrienne to see if we could clarify the situation. Using both Boyle and Fahy’s site surveys, Fahy’s report, and our own observations regarding the marker stones, we made a short video.
Note the height of the bracken – it made photographing the circle impossible and I wished I had brought a machete.
Next we stumbled around the site outside the circle, beating our way through the bracken, until we located the exact spot where Edith had sat to paint the scene. Remind yourself of the painting and then watch this short video.
Note particularly how accurately she captured not just the stone circle but also the surrounding landscape.
So we have identified Edith’s Holy Place of the Druids. And perhaps, despite this being a cringe-y title, it’s not all that far off the truth. There is some evidence at Drombeg and at Bohonagh that the site was used for ritual purposes and that implies a priestly class. Edith used the word Druid, not unusual for her time, although that idea that Druids built stone circles is really an 18th century invention.
We know the word originally from classical writers: Caesar for example used it to describe learned men encountered through the Roman conquests who functioned as priests and judges. ‘Druid’ was revived in the 18th century by antiquarians: William Stukeley popularised it when he proposed that Stonehenge and Avebury were the religious products of an early ‘Celtic’ Druid culture. They were druidic temples, he said, and even though he was wrong (being out by a couple of thousand years), so persuasive was he that the romantic idea of druids has persisted ever since in the popular imagination. Our old friend Vallancey was also fond of druids.
So there was Boyle with his instruments, his rigorous measurements and his archaeological knowledge, using evidence-based methodology to come to conclusions about solar alignments. And there was Edith with her paints and her canvas, painting what she saw, but labelling it as the work of a putative priestly class. What is amazing, actually, is that none of that interfered with her ability to produce on canvas a hyper-accurate treatment of the Bohonagh Stone circle as it was before her eyes. And perhaps her second title, Grave of a Chieftain, is a more prescient one, since Fahy did find cremated bone in a pit within the stone circle.
Both Boyle and Fahy identified Bohonagh as an equinoctial circle – that is, on the spring and autumn equinoxes, if you stand between the portals you will see the sun set over the recumbent – just like at Drombeg except that Drombeg is a winter solstice alignment. Several years ago, we met with Ken Williams of Shadows and Stone at Bohonagh to photograph that phenomenon. Here is his photograph, from our original post and used with permission.
Many thanks to Michael Waldron, Angela Fahy, Billy O’Brien, Adrienne Harrington, Ken Williams, and to Nigel and Claire Vickery, on whose land Bohonagh stands.
*Edith Œ. Somerville, A Holy Place of the Druids or Grave of a Chieftain, undated. Collection Crawford Art Gallery, Cork
**The copyright on the image of Callanish is owned by Tom Richardson and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.
One of the most fascinating archaeological sites in West Cork is Templebryan, close to Shannonvale, a complex that includes a multiple stone circle and an early ecclesiastical site with a large pillar stone that may be contemporary with either of those sites. The location was likely a focus of activity from the Bronze Age to the present day.
Before we explore the site itself, and because I haven’t written this kind of post for a while, you might like to (re)familiarise yourself with both stone circles and ecclesiastical sites. For the stone circles, go to Stone Circles of West Cork: an Introduction. At the bottom of the post under ‘Related” you will find links to the other three posts (Multiple Stone Circles,Five-Stone Circles and the Discussion). There are very few of the Templebryan type of ecclesiastical sites in West Cork but one I have written about is at Croagh Cove – it will give you an excellent idea of this type of site. I am inserting here one of the illustrations from that post.
Since it’s the older, let’s start with the stone circle. This is a multiple stone circle. Although only 5 stones remain (one fallen), there were originally 9 stones in the circle. What’s unusual about this circle is the presence of a near-centrally placed quartz boulder. There are several other stone circles with such internal monoliths and all seem to be deliberately off-centre.
The other feature that’s noticeable here is that most of the stones still standing have flat tops – that seems to be a deliberate choice and can be observed in some other stone circles too.
The probable alignment is, like Drombeg, to the winter solstice. However, Mike Wilson in his Mega-What site, also traces lunar alignments.
Outliers – standing stones close to or at some distance from the circle, are an accepted feature of some stone circles, and some antiquarians have posited that the pillar stone in the ecclesiastical enclosure may have been one of them, later adapted and christianised for use by the monks. Since it has not been excavated we cannot know if this is so. The late great Jack Roberts thought it was possible – here is one of his marvellous illustrations of the various things to be found at Templebryan.
Templebryan was of great interest to antiquarians and Marian O’Leary, in a wonderful essay in the Clonakilty Journal, has looked at their often fantastical renderings of the stone circle. This is one of her illustrations, dating from 1742!
The ecclesiastical site is located a field over to the northwest. We don’t have a secure date, but it fits the pattern of such foundations from the early medieval period with a likely date between the 600s to the 900s.
The aerial photos and the maps confirm that the central church was a rectangular building and it sat within a circular enclosure which now forms the field boundary.
These early sites often had an outer circular boundary as well, and traces of this can be found still – I had a close look at the aerial photo and my arrows (above) point to where the line of the outer circle might be. But that’s mostly speculation, or perhaps wishful thinking on my part – what do you think?
The Nendrum site shown in the Croagh Cove post is a good example of this outer and inner enclosure pattern for early Irish monastic foundations. Above is an illustration of what that might have looked like, taken from the information board at Nendrum, which we visited in 2022.
The ogham stone and a bullaun stone lie inside the enclosure. Bullaun stones are commonly found at ecclesiastical sites – abbeys, monasteries, old churches. Although they may be far older and have been used in some kind of food processing (such as grinding acorns) it seems that their obvious affinity to fonts has caused them to be brought to religious sites over the centuries. Read Robert’s post The Enigmatic Bullaun for the variety of beliefs (from blessings to cursings) that have accrued to bullaun stones.
The ogham stone is a tall pointed pillar and it has both an inscribed cross and ogham writing on it. However, it is impossible to make them out. The only mark I saw that looked like a cross was this one. Not very convincing.
And the ogham is just as hard to see. According to the National Monuments listing it was read by Macalister in 1945 as ANM TENAS MACI V. While Macalister was a giant in the field of ogham research, he has been criticised for erroneous readings. If he was correct this would read (pray for?) The soul of Tenas, son of V.
There are two souterrains in the enclosure, neither of which are accessible now. One of them was investigated in 1974 and consisted of three earth-cut chambers joined by creepways.
The same horse later showed us how useful he found the ogham stone for those much-needed scratches. Heaven!
Templebryan is a great site if you get a chance to visit. Just please be aware that the ecclesiastical part it is on private land and it is always proper to knock in the farmhouse door and ask for permission. The stone circle is accessible from the road.
I’ve had the most marvellous emails from James Goggin – thank you James! Three of his grandparents came from Crookhaven – and the fourth, well that’s him in this spectacular photograph. Yes, he’s in a diving suit. James tells me: His name was Allen G Tyson, and he had come from Wales to work at the Crookhaven Quarry, seconded from Flintshire council in North Wales. Aggregates from the quarry were sent to North Wales amongst other places. He was a tall man and brilliant mathematician and civil engineer and lived with us in later life until his death in ’79. He designed the first dual carriageway in N.Wales and worked on the blue jubilee bridge in Queensferry (similar to and at the same time as Sydney and Newcastle bridges).
The quarry, of course, is the monumental structure, above, that Robert wrote about in his post Industrial Archaeology in Crookhaven, one of our most popular posts. It seems that anyone who has ever been to Crookhaven has wondered about that wall of concrete across the bay. James also sent me this shot of a group of men who worked at the quarry. Cloth caps and moustaches were the order of the day – except for Allen Tyson – he’s the suited and coiffed individual in the back row.
Once in Crookhaven, Allen met and married Bridget O’Driscoll. They had 5 children, including James’s mother Phyllis, who married Joe Goggin. Joe died not too long ago at the age of 91 and still has a sibling in Clonakilty, James remembers happy family holidays in his Nana’s house, the old Barracks next to the Marconi House in the village. He is full of stories and precious memories.
My father used to row coal to the Fastnet for a shilling or two. He told me of an uncle who used to shoot the sea mines ( like prickly conkers) with a .303 from Carrigeen cliffs off Rock Street. Nana would climb down to the sea for driftwood for the fire into her 70s. I remember the sacred heart picture and light, and the lights would flicker as I believe there was a generator in the village for power. A large old transistor radio in the kitchen with all the valves visible. Cold cupboard (a safe) under the stairs. Soda bread (and marmalade daily made in the range.
James told me several other stories about his father, whom he admired and loved. But he also sent me another gem! A link to a movie, I Thank a Fool, made partly in Crookhaven, and released in 1962. You can watch it here – the Crookhaven parts start around the 1:09 mark and it is a complete nostalgia fest for those of us who love this part of the world. Here are some screen captures.
The village is still totally recognisable.
The 1804 Brow Head Signal Station is used as a ‘house’ where some of the action takes place. You can see Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph station in the background. For more on these structures go here for Marconi and here for the Signal Station.
There is also a funeral at St Brendan’s Church. The procession gives us a marvellous opportunity to see back to Crookhaven and the mining magazine that was once clearly visible behind the town, but which is no longer a mark on the landscape. I’ve used that as my feature image at the top of the post, but here’s another take. That’s Peter Finch as the leading man.
I love it when this kind of serendipity happens – thanks again, James. I know that anyone who loves Crookhaven, as we do, will really like this walk through past times.
The highlight of last week was a trip around Roaringwater Bay in a traditional wooden boat, the Saoirse Muireann, visiting the Skeam Islands. Our captain was Cormac Levis, who led us last year on a trip to Castle Island and who is encyclopaedic in his knowledge of Roaringwater Bay.
Now, you may be tempted, as I was, to pronounce this The Skeems, but you can mark yourself out as a true local by referring casually to the Shkames. Called after St Céim (pronounced Kame), apparently, although this particular saint is surprisingly controversial, cropping up as Céin, Keane, or Kame, depending on the authority. THE authority, Pádraig O’Riain, in his Dictionary of Irish Saints is uncharacteristically silent on this saint, so we turn to the Mizen Journal for more information. The Mizen Journal was the much-missed publication of the Mizen Archaeological and Historical Society and it combined well-researched articles with lots of local lore. Bernard O’Regan was a highly-regarded local historian, interviewed by two others, Lee Snodgrass and Paddy O’Leary, before his death in 1994. In the interview he gave this account:
When St Ciaran left Cape Clear to go to the continent to be educated, he left his brother Kame and his sister in Cape [Clear]. Kame then built a wooden church on the West Skeam (Inis Kame, Kame’s Island).
The Bernard O’Regan Story Part 2
Mizen Journal No 4
Remember the bit about the wooden church, as we’ll come back to that.
According to the geologist Anthony Beese, the West Skeam and the East Skeam were once probably joined, and possibly to Heir Island also, since the seas are very shallow between them. Based on geomorphological evidence, and Keating’s 17th century History of Ireland, Beese estimates that the islands may have separated due to storm activity some time between the 5th and the 9th centuries. Such a scenario, he says, would explain the lack of evidence for an early medieval settlement and burial ground on Heir Island.
His own interpretation of the placename is more prosaic – rather than being based on a saint, he speculates that the Irish word scéimh (pronounced shcay-ev) might be apt – it means an overhang, a projecting rim or edge. He says:
The attitude of the cliffs of the Skeam Islands is determined by the subvertical dip of bedding planes, and when walking over the ridges, the feeling is one of looking down from a high table, boats below your feet, the rocky shore hidden.
Anthony Beese
The Natural Environment and Place-Names of the Skeam Islands
Mizen Journal, Vol 8, 2000
The goats on East Skeam certainly appreciate the cliffs.
So take your pick – the Skeams are named from a saintly church builder from Cape Clear, or the name reflects the geology of the island. Which side are you on?
West Skeam has a fascinating history, as evidenced by the barely-hanging-on remains of an early Christian Church. It’s a small single chamber with antae and a splayed linteled doorway. In the photo above, courtesy of the Irish Times, it’s the small ruin on the bank halfway along the beach. Take a look at my post Irish Romanesque – an Introduction for more about this kind of early, pre-Romanesque Church. It is presumed that antae – the projections of the side walls beyond the gable wall – reflect an earlier form of wooden church in which those projections helped to hold up the roof and provide shelter over the entry. The survival of this feature is known as a Skeuomorph – an imitation in the stone-built form of the earlier wooden construction method.
This little church is very significant – It’s the only one of its kind in West Cork. For many years it has been falling into the sea. Although once, Beese notes, it would have been high and dry, successive storms and the prevailing winds have eroded the bank it stands on over the centuries. Local people, Cormac included, tell of bones eroding out of the bank. The archaeologist Edward Fahy conducted a brief survey in 1962. The drawing above and one at the top of this post are from that report, and here is the conclusion:
Inhumed burials are visible in the cliff for a distance of almost thirty feet to the north and south as well as within the church itself where they are overlain by some soil and 18” of collapse from the walls. The burials extend downwards to foundation level of the building and appear to post-date it. The density of burials is not high and the skeletons are laid parallel to the axis of the church with their feet to the east. One grave is slab-lined but the rest are simple inhumations.
The architectural features of the church, dry stone building, simple doorway with inclined jambs and without architrave, the antae and the estimated length/breath ratio of the interior suggest a ninth century date for the structure. It is to be regretted that this, the only church of its date in the area is to be allowed to crumble into the sea.
Edward Fahy
Skeam Island Church,
Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, 1962
A proper excavation was conducted by Claire Cotter in 1990, necessitated by a proposal by the OPW to build a wall to protect the church from further erosion. Here’s what the bank looked like when Fahy reported in 1962, and it was in an even more perilous condition by 1990.
Cotter published her findings in an article, Archaeological Excavations at Skeam West, in the Mizen Journal, Vol 3, 1995. The excavation was confined to the burial grounds – that is, the area outside the church itself. It revealed that burials had been taking place there long before the stone church had been built! In fact, radiocarbon dating of the first phase, containing 24 individuals, mostly adult males, assigned a date range of 430 to 770AD.
Phase 2, consisting of 15 bodies buried in the north side of the church, once again mostly adults, but this time one body could be identified as female. Rather than in body-shaped cuttings, some of these bodies had been placed in pits, and they were in a semi-propped up positions. These burials dated from 550 to 855.
This is what the church looks like now from the landward side. It’s very overgrown, but you can clearly see the antae and the linteled entry
Phrase 3 encompassed 33 bodies and dated from 1165 to 1395, after which the graveyard went out of use. Some of these graves may have had markers – a stone cross and notched stones were found.
Another interesting find, Cotter tells us:
In a number of burials the head was marked by small flat stones – generally one stone set close to the head on each side. This may indicate that the bodies had been placed on timber planking – the cradle stones would subsequently support the head and keep it in position when the timber planks had rotted away leaving a void within the grave. Remains of such timbers have been found in early medieval graves in England. In the case of Skeam, such timber planking could have formed part of a bier, perhaps used to carry the body on the sea journey. Two burials of newborn infants also belong to this phase and these had been placed on large stone flags.
It looks as if this burial ground was accommodating people from the other islands. Apart from a cillínon Heir Island, there are no burial grounds on East Skeam or on Heir. A midden to the south of the church contained lots of fish and shellfish remains, as well as fragments of seal and whale bones, and cattle sheep and pig bones. This activity dated to the 16th and 17th centuries.
Cotter, in her discussion, says the following:
There are no historical references to the church on Skeam west. It lies in the parish of Aughadown; and a decretal letter of Pope Innocent III [that’s him, below]issued in 1199 refers to “Aughadown and its appurtenances” and the Church in Skeam West may well have been included in these. Local tradition attributes the origins of some ecclesiastical foundation on the island to Ceim or Keims, a brother of Kieran of Cape Clear. This would place the foundation in the pre-patrician period and the site is therefore of great interest. Was the stone church built to replace an earlier wooden structure – perhaps destroyed by the storm which washed up the deposit of shingle visible at the north side of the present building?
. . . Small church sites such as Skeam were generally located within an enclosure which defined the termon or area of sanctuary of the church, and the ditch uncovered to the south of the church is probably the remains of such an enclosure. The question as to whether these foundations should be regarded as monastic has been much discussed in recent years. Some scholars suggest that these ecclesiastical foundations should be regarded as small church sites which provided essential religious services for the local community. Others would argue that the majority of these foundations began as monasteries and only later assumed a community role. In many examples the earliest burials are exclusively male and only at a later stage do we find mixed burial i.e. adults and children of both sexes.
. . . The burial ground at Skeam West appears to have been used over a long period perhaps as long as the 900 years. During its later history it may have been used by a wider community drawn from the neighbouring islands and coastal district as well as the Skeams.
She adds:
The human burials uncovered during the excavations were re-buried on the island in 1992 in what is hopefully their final resting place.
Above is the OPW wall, which seems to be doing the job of arresting erosion for the moment.
There’s lots more to tell you about the West Skeam Island, including fascinating details as to who owned it, and what life was like there. And we haven’t even arrived at the other Skeam Island, East Skeam, yet! Next time.
One final note – the island is privately owned and monitored by video link. A disembodied voice reminded us that we were trespassing, at which point we left.
Republishing one of Robert’s classic posts. This one was originally published in May, ten years ago, under the title High Drama.
If you suffer from vertigo or claustrophobia – or both – then you won’t want to follow us in the adventure we had this week while returning from a visit to Dublin: climbing to the top of an Irish Round Tower! Overcoming any tendencies we might have had towards these phobias, we arrived at the roof of the 32.6 metre high Kildare tower and marvelled at being able to stand on the summit of a piece of architecture over a thousand years old. Kildare has the second highest Round Tower still extant in Ireland: the highest is at Kilmacduagh, Co Galway, at 34.9 metres; however, Kildare now lacks a conical cap, which it might once have had. If so, it would just tip in as the highest of all the towers.
Kildare Round Tower: note the battlemented top – probably added in an 18th century restoration, the romanesque doorway and the granite base. The upper stonework is limestone and sandstone
The print above – dating from 1788 – shows the ruins of St Brigid’s Church, which was fully restored as a Church of Ireland Cathedral a hundred years later. We looked down on this from our vantage point atop the Tower – and had a good view of the (also restored) Fire Temple where a perpetual flame, lit by the Saint, was kept burning for hundreds of years, finally being extinguished by the shenanigans of Henry VIII.
Looking down on Kildare Cathedral, with St Brigid’s ‘Fire Temple’ in the grounds
You’ll have heard me talk about St Brigid many times: she’s second only to St Patrick in the Irish Martyrology. In fact, as probably the most influential woman in Irish history, I’m going to declare her as quite the equal of St Patrick: she’s often enough described as one of the Patron Saints of Ireland. You will also know that she is surrounded by folklore and traditional customs, such as the making of her Cross on her day, the First of February.
St Brigid’s Cross – left, at her Holy Well and right, a textile in the Solas Bhride Centre, Kildare
Back to the adventure (although the whole day was adventurous!) – climbing the tower was hard going. There were a series of near-vertical ladders to be negotiated: each one took us to a higher timber platform, six floors in all. At the top of each ladder we had to squeeze ourselves through a narrow opening; this, and the confines of the tower interior – only two metres or so across – certainly challenged the claustrophobiac in me.
The restricted space also made us question some of the theories about the uses of these towers, which are always located at ecclesiastical sites. The definitive work on them is, as it happens, written by someone who also lives in West Cork – just a little distance from Nead an Iolair: Brian Lalor. Brian has led a very full life, involving architecture, archaeology, sketching and printing (his etchings are exquisite). He is also the author of a number of books, many of which are on our own shelves, including The Irish Round Tower, published by The Collins Press, 1999 and 2005.
Brian is unequivocal in his assertion that the primary purpose for round towers was to house the monastery bell. He also suggests that a secondary function would be as a safe storage place for the monastic treasures: the entrance door was always raised at a considerable height above the surrounding ground level, requiring steps or a ladder to gain access. In the times when they were constructed they would have been visually impressive – and could be seen from a great distance. They would have acted as signposts for travellers who might have been searching for the hospitality which monastic communities always offered. Brian discounts some of the more bizarre theories for the towers – for example, that they might have been places of safe refuge for the monks if under threat of attack by Vikings – or that they are simply phallic symbols! Lastly, Brian considers – and gives some credence to – the idea that the towers were monumental buildings of prestige and local aristocratic patronage: certainly, they required considerable expense and effort to construct.
As is often the case with our days out, one adventure led on to another. When we came down from the tower we found that St Brigid’s Cathedral had closed for lunch. But we knew that the Saint’s trail also involved a Holy Well and we had heard that there was a new building devoted to the work of Brigid just outside Kildare.
Solas Brhíde Centre
Robert with Phil, one of the Sisters who conceived the project
We were very impressed with the Solas Bhríde Centre: a small group of Brigidine Sisters has put together the project to build a Christian Spirituality Centre which unfolds the legacy of St Brigid and shows that it is still relevant in the present day. We were shown around the Centre by one of these Sisters, Phil, who pointed out that Brigid was attuned to the natural world and would have appreciated that the new building (designed by Solearth Ecological Architecture) is conceived on ecologically sound terms using sustainable materials and techniques which care for the wellbeing of the Earth. The plan of the building is appropriately inspired by the shape of a St Brigid’s Cross.
Architect’s drawing of the newly completed building
The next stop on our itinerary was the nearby Holy Well – a popular place of pilgrimage and veneration on St Brigid’s Day:
Finally, we arrived back at the Cathedral. I’m always a little disappointed by restorations – particularly those which were carried out in Victorian times; nevertheless there are some impressive features. The possibly twelfth century font is one of them (below left), and another has to be the hidden Sheelagh-na-gig under the lip of Bishop Wellesley’s tomb (below right). I reached under to feel this little carving, and was then told by the Cathedral’s guardian that anyone who touches the effigy is ensured everlasting fertility!
The excellent Heritage Centre opposite the Cathedral entrance is informative about the town’s history and the important connections with this special Saint. There is much more to be discovered – and written – in respect of St Brigid, and other places in Ireland which are connected with her still to be visited. Do go to Kildare and, at the very least, suspend your phobias sufficiently to allow you to climb the ancient Round Tower. But make sure you go between May and September – and not during the lunch hour…
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