Submitted to
The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland for 2011Building lordship in thirteenth‐century Ireland:
the
donjon of Coonagh Castle, Co. LimerickTadhg O'Keeffe
Coonagh Castle, built
c.1225, was the centrepiece of a strategically locatedestate, the ownership of which was disputed in the middle
decades of the thirteenth century. Central characters in that dispute
were its builders, the husband‐and‐wife team of William and
Matilda de Marisco, the former subsequently achieving notoriety as
a pirate operating out of Lundy Island. Relative to its demonstrable
importance, historical and archaeological, no Anglo‐Norman castle
in Ireland has slipped as far below the radar of scholarly attention
as Coonagh. Its
donjon offers the modern visitor a more intimatecommunion with the rituals of thirteenth‐century lordship than
many better‐known castles of the period.
A canon of architecturally‐important castles of the late twelfth and
thirteenth centuries in Ireland was established just over a decade
ago in the syntheses published by Tom McNeill and David
Sweetman
1. It is, however, an incomplete canon. Some buildings ofunquestionable importance occupy marginal places in that canon
simply because their above‐ground preservation is poor and
archaeological excavation is needed to establish or clarify their
plans, while others are marginal for no apparent reason other than
an infrequency of visits by castle‐scholars. This paper presents a
description and analysis of one Anglo‐Norman building, Coonagh
Castle, Co. Limerick, which, having somehow escaped the attention
of most castle‐scholars since the early 1900s
2, is not even on themargins of the canon, and yet should be regarded by archaeologists
and historians as one of Ireland’s most interesting thirteenth century
castles (Figs 1, 2).
The ruins of the castle are at the edge of a farmyard on a small
cul de‐sac that leads off the R507, the road connecting the villages of
Doon and Oola in east Limerick. Its site is the crest of a low east facing
escarpment, quarried to provide for a lime‐kiln in the
nineteenth century. At the base of this runs a small river, the
Cahernahallia, a tributary of the Dead River, itself a tributary of the
Mulkear River. The castle and the ruined parish church nearby, a
modest fifteenth‐century building on a site with no evidence of
earlier use, are located in the contiguous townlands of Coolbaun
and Carrig Beg respectively. Both are in the civil parish of
Castletown. It is apparent from the historical record, and indeed
from the architecture of the castle, as we will see, that the manor
with which this parish was coterminuous was the capital manor of
the medieval cantred of Okonagh or Oconagh. Its name derives
from Uí Chuanach, a local lineage which still had kings in the twelfth
century
3. The cantred, now preserved more or less coterminuouslyin the modern barony of Coonagh, was shared between counties
Limerick and Tipperary, and was draped across the lowland corridor
connecting the city of Limerick with Tipperary town, Cashel, and the
other major settlements in the Suir‐drained lowlands of east
Munster. Coonagh itself was fairly central in that lowland corridor
(Fig. 3).
Apart from Coonagh Castle and the medieval church nearby, and
some possible medieval ridge‐and‐furrow in Carrig More townland
to the south‐east of the church, there is no obvious or aboveground
evidence of medieval occupation in the parish of
Castletown. The parish’ name possibly refers to an otherwise
undocumented attempt at town foundation, or more likely an
aspiration to create a settlement, but Castletown remained a rural
place through the middle ages. The cantred’ main population
centres were to the east, and the principal centre was the town of
Tipperary, less than ten miles to the south‐east of Coonagh Castle.
The cantred, manor and castle in the thirteenth century
Although there is no direct reference to its construction, the
historical sources suggest a mid‐1220s date for Coonagh Castle, and
the architectural evidence corroborates. To understand the context
of its construction, and indeed to understand the disputes
concerning its ownership not long after its construction, we need to
go back to the earliest horizon of Anglo‐Norman occupation in
Limerick and Tipperary.
The early history of the cantred of Okonagh is poorly documented.
Although it may have been one of the territories which John
granted to William de Burgh in the late 1100s, evidence that it was
in the king’ possession in 1215 suggests strongly William de Braose
(or de Briouze) held it in the early years of the thirteenth century,
and that it was he who established the
vill of ‘Tibrary’ and its parishchurch, both then recorded
4. Historians, uncertain as to thelocation of the cantred’s
caput, have speculated in the past that thisvill
fulfilled that role during the thirteenth century5, and that mayindeed have been the case in the first decade of the century, but it
would not have been so from the mid‐1220s when new owners,
whom we will meet presently, invested heavily in creating a
sumptuous seigneurial residence, Coonagh Castle, in the west of
the cantred.
We know nothing of the district around Coonagh Castle in the early
years of Anglo‐Norman lordship. However, given the strategic
importance of the lowland routeway linking Limerick city and south
Tipperary, it seems likely that William de Braose built a castle
somewhere in the western part of the cantred, possibly on the
actual site occupied by Coonagh Castle from the 1220s: the site is
flat ground which is bordered by a curving break of slope on its
south side, and this raises the possibility of an earlier earth‐andtimber
castle with an enclosure of about 50m in diameter. It is
worth noting that one of the key comparators for Coonagh’
donjon
, the contemporary donjon in Castletown Conyers townlandin south Limerick, discussed later (p. x) was preceded (though not
on the exact same site) by a motte‐castle, erected by its firstgeneration
Anglo‐Norman enfoeffee.
Henry of London and the cantred of Okonagh
Okonagh, in common with other de Braose properties in Ireland,
was confiscated by King John in 1210 when William, unable to pay
the enormous sum he owed the crown for possession of his estates,
fled and was subsequently outlawed. A royal grant in 1215
6 gavethe cantred, with the
vill of Tipperary and the advowson of itsparish church, and the services of the knights of both cantred and
vill
, to Holy Trinity, Dublin, to hold of the service of three knights.This grant came with the proviso that the crown would not be
required to provide an exchange to the archbishop at Holy Trinity
should anyone ‘justly traverse the title’ to Okonagh. This clause
indicates that there was some uncertainty in the king’s mind as to
rightful possession, and so anticipates an actual dispute over
possession two decades later.
Although manorial development was slow in the thirteenth century,
not least in this part of Ireland
7, the manner in which the grantattaches the
vill and advowson to the cantred suggests that adistinction was already emerging in 1215 between the (rural)
territory of Okonagh, centred probably on an eponymous if still
embryonic manor at Coonagh, and a (town‐centred) manor of
Tipperary. References to Okonagh after 1215 –and there is none
for more than a decade –may sometimes be to an actual manor of
that name (hereafter given as Coonagh, in order to make the
distinction), rather than to the cantred in its entirety.
William de Marisco and Coonagh
We do not know the geographical extent of the thirteenth‐century
manor at Coonagh, but legal tussles over its ownership in the
middle of the century suggests it was valuable because it was
extensive as well as strategic. It is conceivable, then, that it was
comprised of the whole western (or Limerick) side of the cantred,
and that Castletown civil parish, the parish in which the castle
stands, simply corresponds to the demesne. Whatever its
geography, it remained an archepiscopal possession until Henry of
London, the archbishop of Dublin at the time of the 1215 grant,
included it with the manors of Tipperary and Castle Blathac (near
Limerick
8) in an endowment of the entire cantred to Matilda, anear‐relation, possibly a niece, on her marriage to William de
Marisco, the eldest son of Geoffrey de Marisco
9.The alienation of the cantred to Matilda suggests that Henry held it,
or at least viewed it, as a personal fief to be disposed of at his will,
and yet the grant was formally approved by the chapters of both
Holy Trinity and St Patrick’s
10. The date of the marriage, andtherefore the date of the passage of the cantred out of Church
hands and back into secular lordship, is not recorded, but we know
that it must have been in or before 1226, because in that year
Henry III granted William de Marisco a weekly fair in Tipperary, the
cantred’s main settlement
11. Although the grant of that fair mighthave been made in the context of the union of Matilda and William,
in which case we have a date of 1225 or 1226 for their wedding, the
grant probably needs to be understood in the context of the king’s
reappointment of Geoffrey de Marisco to the position of justiciar in
1226, and of his simultaneous grant to Geoffrey of a fair in Adare
12.William de Marisco himself was of age by 1224
13, and if he marriedMatilda when he came of age, as seems likely, we can posit a daterange
of 1220‐24 for the handover of the cantred by Holy Trinity.
The earliest reference to a principal baronial castle in the cantred
dates from November 1234, and is unquestionably a reference to
the castle that we see today. It is described then as William de
Marisco’ castle
14. Although this reference cannot be taken as proofthat Coonagh Castle was de Marisco in actual origin, there is no
strong case, historical or architectural, for attributing it to Henry of
London, the only other candidate once we exclude from
consideration the earlier William de Braose. First, had the
archbishop erected so substantial a castle in the cantred after 1215,
an unlikely action in and of itself, the endowment to Matilda would
(judging by the phraseology of contemporary grants of lands with
major castles) have included a mention of it. In any case, had the
bishop erected a big stone castle at considerable expense, he would
surely have opted to retain the portion of the cantred attached to it
and to give Matilda some other lands instead. Second, the
architectural evidence suggests that the castle we see today was a
fairly new building anyway in 1234; although it could date from the
1210s, its architecture is more consistent with a date in the 1220s.
Moreover, its design has parallels in some other buildings of de
Marisco origin, as we will see. If we knew the exact date of the
marriage we would have a certain
terminus post quem for itsconstruction, but in the absence of a date it seems reasonable to
assign the building to
c.1225. Work may have begun between 1220and 1224, the years during which William de Marisco probably
reached adulthood and married, and it would certainly have been
completed by 1230 at the latest. Perhaps William
and Matildashould really have been identified in 1234 as its builders, but the
source may be indicating to us an early thirteenth‐century
understanding that it was de Marisco money and know‐how which
allowed the
caput be furnished with so fine a building.The decision to have the
caput of the cantred, Coonagh, separatefrom the cantred’s main town, Tipperary, was probably made by
William and Matilda. It was not a unique decision: the fitzGeralds of
Imokilly in Cork did the same in the early thirteenth century,
maintaining the rural manor of Inchiquin (with its stone castle, of
the 1210s or 1220s) as their
caput while promoting the port ofYoughal as their major urban centre
15. However, the separation ofthe
caput from the main town by a major administrative boundary– the boundary between the medieval counties of Limerick and
Tipperary respectively – may, if it dates from early thirteenth
century, be unique. The detailed chronology of the division of the
original kingdom of Limerick into these two counties is unknown,
except that it had been achieved by 1235
16, but the cantred’sproprietorial history suggests that its shrieval partition had been
effected a decade earlier and with some involvement by William de
Marisco. Under William de Braose, the cantred had been oriented
towards the districts that were to constitute the county of
Tipperary from about the second quarter of the thirteenth century,
but William de Marisco’s gaze was in the direction of the cantreds
with which he had family connections – those that came to
constitute the county of Limerick – and this patrimony must have
inspired the location of his seigneurial castle in the western part of
the cantred, rather than close to the
vill of Tipperary,notwithstanding the king’s grant of a fair. More significantly,
William would have known of any uncertainty surrounding the title
to the cantred (as indicated in the original 1215 grant to Henry of
London). He might therefore have seen strategic value in putting
down his seigneurial roots away from the
vill, and in allowing theinvisible boundary of shrieval jurisdiction run up the middle of the
cantred, attaching him to the sheriff of Limerick rather than to the
sheriff of Tipperary.
William and Matilda had little time to enjoy their new castle in
Coonagh: the November 1234 reference to the castle relates to
their loss of it. Earlier that year William was serving with the king’s
army against Richard Marshal, earl of Pembroke (a service for which
the sheriff of Munster back‐paid a support fee of £100 to Matilda in
1235
17), but in May 1234 he and his father, Geoffrey, and at leastone brother, Walter, were found in the company of the Earl and
captured by the king’s army. Their association with Marshal was
serious enough to warrant their imprisonment for several months,
but their offence not so certain as to necessitate an immediate and
permanent confiscation of their possessions. The November 1234
reference is to the king retaining their castles – Geoffrey’s castles of
Killorglin and Hollywood, and William’s castle at Coonagh – as
‘security for their faithful service’,
after they had been released.Their freedom was short‐lived, however. In 1235 Geoffrey and
William were implicated with others in the famous murder in
Westminster of Henry Clement, the clerk of the justiciar, Maurice
FitzGerald
18. The murder was evidently organised by supporters ofRichard Marshal, among whom were believed to be Geoffrey and
his sons, and the king sought immediate arrests. Geoffrey fled to
the Knights of the Hospital of St John in Clerkenwell, only to reemerge
shortly after, fully exonerated. But William escaped arrest
by bolting to Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel, a small and
remote place which had been in his family’s possession for the
previous two generations. Famously, William used it as a base for
maritime piracy, not only in the vast Severn estuary but also up into
Scotland
19. His career as a pirate lasted until 1242 when he wasfinally captured by the crown and executed. Matilda was also
arrested and detained. She was presumably in London with her
husband at the time of the murder, which suggests there was no
actual seigneurial presence in the newly‐built Coonagh Castle from
1234 or 1235. In Summer 1243 the sheriff of Gloucester was
instructed by the king to release her on the grounds that the
murderous and piratical felonies were committed by her husband,
not by her
20.Archbishop Luke and Coonagh
In June 1236, with William de Marisco on the run, Henry III
reopened the issue of the title to the cantred. He requested a copy
of the charter by which King John had originally granted it to
Archbishop Henry
21. Satisfied with its legality, the following monthhe mandated his justiciar to instruct Luke, Henry’s successor as
archbishop of Dublin, to take back possession of it
22. The castledisappears from the record for the next fifteen years, but its
presence is probably part of the reason why the estate remained in
the news.
In 1242, five years after Henry III’s grant, Luke gave a twenty‐year
lease of his ‘anor of Oconach’–actually the cantred –to Maurice
FitzGerald, the justiciar and Henry Clement’ former employer, at a
yearly rent of 58 marks, with the condition that Maurice surrender
it ‘ith appurtenances,
castle, houses, etc’ (italics added) in goodcondition to the Church at the end of the lease
23. The archbishop’sdecision to issue this lease was presumably motivated by politics, as
was the choice of leasee. If Luke knew of William de Marisco’s
execution, he may have feared a repossession of the lands by the
crown. If he knew that Matilda had been spared execution, he may
have feared her reappearance as the rightful owner. Whatever the
more pressing object of his concern, the lease to Maurice FitzGerald
was presumably a very deliberate and carefully timed expression of
his right, as he saw it, to dispose of the land as he wished, while
simultaneously reminding the king of de Marisco’s involvement in
Clement’s murder.
In June 1244 Henry III did indeed order the justiciar to restore to
Matilda those confiscated possessions which Henry of London had
granted to her at the time of her marriage. Significantly, he also
instructed Archbishop Luke to allow her peaceful possession
24. Theinstruction indicates that the crown sensed, or already had actual
evidence of, Luke’s hostility to any de Marisco repossession of
Okonagh.
It is certainly clear to us that Luke took steps to frustrate the
renewal of the grant to Matilda. One item of evidence is the new
grant of the cantred which he issued to the Prior and canons of
Holy Trinity and to the Dean and Chapter of St Patrick’s
25. This isprobably best interpreted as a pre‐emptive grant, made before the
king had finally decided to give Okonagh back to Matilda. Granting
the cantred to the ecclesiastical communities which, some twenty
years earlier, had confirmed Henry of London’ original grant to
Matilda, was a fairly extraordinary ruse. Luke’ thinking seems
clear, however. If the king upheld Matilda’ claim to Okonagh on
the grounds that his predecessor as archbishop had made the grant
to her, that was the precedent by which Luke himself could claim
the authority to grant the cantred under his name to another party.
By naming the Holy Trinity and St Patrick’ communities as that
other party, Luke wrapped Okonagh in a sort of double‐bind which,
he doubtless figured, the king might find difficult to negotiate in
order to deny the Church seisin. The second item of evidence is a
charter procured from Hugh Tyrell of Castleknock, probably in
1242/43
26. In it, Tyrell granted to St Patrick’s and to ArchbishopLuke, and to their successors in perpetuity, all of that land – not
specified – in Okonagh which he, Tyrell, claimed William de Marisco
had held of him and then subinfeudated to one William de
Hispania. Tyrell claimed to have already recovered this ‘as his
escheat’ on account of de Marisco’s felony
27. Hugh Tyrell actuallyclaimed rights over the entire cantred of Oconagh, and entered into
an agreement with Luke that, should he win ‘his suit with William
de Mariscis about that land’, he would divide it between his family
and the archbishops of Dublin
28.A third item of evidence clearly post‐dates the king’ decision to
give Okonagh back to Matilda, and must be adjudged Luke’
immediate and last‐ditch response to the impending loss of the
cantred. It is a letter, undated but assigned by Eric St John Brooks to
1244, which Luke sent to Ralph de Neville, the bishop of Chichester
and the king’ chancellor, imploring him to persuade the king to
take ownership of all the possessions which William de Marisco had
in the cantred of Okonagh on the day of his initial arrest back in
1234
29. Luke may have drawn Ralph’s attention back to 1234because he believed William’s treachery against the king was
demonstrably more deserving of confiscation than the murder of a
junior official and a career of piracy. Luke’s expectation,
presumably, was that king, if he took the cantred back, would
eventually restore seisin to the Church.
Henry III and Coonagh
These interventions seem to have persuaded Henry III some time
after June 1244 that the problem of title to Okonagh was best
resolved in the short‐term by simply taking it back into his
possession. Thus, in January 1245 he mandated John FitzGeoffrey,
justiciar, to reclaim on his behalf the cantred with its baronial
castle, and to await further orders
30. In June 1245 we learn that theking had, in the interim, requested and inspected the charter by
which Henry of London had given Okonagh to Matilda. He then
ruled that William de Marisco’s outlawry was irrelevant to the fate
of Okonagh because the cantred had been Matilda’s marriage
portion. Accordingly, he ordained that she should be permitted
seisin of it
31. In making this ruling he referred again to the doubtexpressed over title back in 1215: Matilda was to be restored to
Okonagh ‘saving the right of any person who can claim it against
her in the King’s court’. However, his judgement must have been
appealed yet again because five years later, in May 1250, he
decided that Okonagh had been wrongly alienated by the chapters
of Holy Trinity and St Patrick’s back in the 1220s, and he decided
yet again to take possession of it, this time compensating the two
Dublin ecclesiastical communities for their loss of the cantred and
castle with various land. His request that he be given ‘all relevant
muniments in their possession’
32 indicates that he had arrived atwhat he regarded as his final decision. The exchange finally
happened in February 1251
33. Coonagh Castle was, from then, aroyal castle.
Exactly one year later year the king placed the castle in the custody
of one Walter Mansell. He also mandated John FitzGeoffrey to take
‘good and lawful men’ with him to Coonagh to view its defects and
effect their repair, and to pay Walter whatever sum was owed him
as its custodian
34. The implication of this is that the castle had beenlying idle, possibly since the mid‐1230s. In 1260 Prince Edward, who
had been given charge of Ireland by his father, Henry III, in 1254
35,granted Coonagh – presumably the manor, not the cantred – to one
Simon le Minur, a citizen of Limerick, until he himself came to
Ireland or made some other arrangement
36. Edward’s personalcommitment to make some new decisions about Coonagh suggests
a continued dispute over ownership, no documentary evidence of
which survives to us. It is recorded in this grant that Simon had
previously held the land, but there is no other record of this, nor is
there any indication that Simon’s custody of Coonagh included the
castle.
In 1278 the castle was still in royal possession and still (or again) in
need of some repair. In December of that year Edward, now king,
learned that the ‘tower and house’ of
his castle of Coonagh – thesource specifically identifies his ownership – needed roofing, and
accordingly he commanded Robert de Ufford, the justiciar, to
deliver to the castle’s constable as much lead as was needed, drawn
from the royal minery ‘in that country’
37. It seems from thesereferences that Coonagh Castle was a property barely maintained
rather than treasured by the crown. With no significant investment
in its fabric over four‐and‐a‐half decades, Coonagh Castle would
also have looked quite an old building by 1278, especially to a king
as tuned‐in to architectural innovation as Edward
38.In 1281, with the principals who were involved in the mid‐century
disputes all deceased, Edward made a permanent grant of ‘he
castle, cantred and land of Okonagh, the
vill of Tipperary, and otherlands and possessions’ to Otho de Grandison for the service of
seventeen knights
39; this was reduced to the service of two knightsin 1290
40. Otho was also granted a weekly market at Coonagh on aWednesday, and a yearly fair of 15 days duration, as well as free
warren in his demesne lands
41. Otho was no ordinary grantee, but aman whose career had been distinguished and who was a close
confidante of the king; he also knew quite a bit about castles and
their strategic value thanks to his central involvement in the king’s
still on‐going incastellation of north Wales
42. However, he had littleinterest in Okonagh, commiting very quickly the custody of his lands
to his attorney, William de Drayton
43. In 1287 Otho leased hispossessions in Okonagh and elsewhere to the bishop‐elect of Emly
for a term of 10 years at £500 per year, this fee to be paid to
himself or to William de Drayton
44. The fee went unpaid so thepossessions were restored to him in 1290
45. Almost immediatelyafter this, he divided his possessions among his relatives. He gave
Okonagh to his nephew Peter de Estane (or d’Estavayer) for life,
with the service of half a fee owed to the king
46.Coonagh Castle disappears from the records after Otho’s initial
grant of it in 1281, except indirectly in the papal taxation (the
‘Chapel de Novo Castro’
47 is the parish church at Coonagh), and itdoes not reappear until the late middle ages when it is recorded as
a possession of the O’Briens
48. The architecture would suggest thatneither Otho nor his nephew made any investment in it. Apart from
a repaired roof, the castle of 1300 probably looked exactly like the
castle vacated by William and Matilda back in 1234. Even in its late
medieval occupancy, as documented by Westropp, the
donjon wassubstantially as William and Matilda had left it, a mere decade after
they had built it at some expense. Roof repairs may have helped its
interior remain intact and habitable, but its floor timbers would
have been two hundred‐odd years old, and weakened by the years
in which the roof was in disrepair.
The architecture of Coonagh Castle: a description and
reconstruction
The
donjon at Coonagh – the designation donjon is justified below(p. x) – is a rectangular structure, 14.3m by 9m internally, with
square clasping pilasters of shallow projection, and a square turret,
externally 5.2m wide by 3.4m deep, projecting outwards from the
short east wall (Fig. 4); the latter is described hereafter as the
‘projecting turret’. The western side of the
donjon no longersurvives above foundation level, but the two side walls stand to a
height of about 14m, which is almost their original thirteenthcentury
height; the north side‐wall is the better preserved of the
two, so it is unfortunate that a small plantation of recent vintage
prevents a good view of it (Fig. 5). The corner pilasters rose higher
than the side‐ and end‐walls, transforming into small corner turrets
as they cleared the wall‐head; the pilaster/turret on the southeastern
corner is the only one to survive almost complete from
bottom to top, and it is possible to determine an original
thirteenth‐century height of 17m (based on an in‐filled merlon,
visible only on the exterior), with a further 3m+ added on in the late
middle ages. The projecting turret stands to a height of about 20m,
of which the upper 4m+ is probably late medieval.
The exterior of the
donjon is distinguished by large sockets offormer timber structures: a large forebuilding at the east end, the
nature of which is discussed below, and upper‐wall (originally
parapet‐level) hoarding (Fig. 6). It is also distinguished by horizontal
bands of original plaster, the preservation of which suggests that
parts of the walls were protected inside timber attachments that
are not otherwise in evidence; it might be the case that the plaster
was made and spread in different stages, and that what we see
today is differential preservation resulting from differential
durability.
The basement
The
donjon’s lower room, or basement, had immensely thick walls,with the north wall exceeding the others at 3.3m in thickness. The
corner pilasters were solid at this level. There were at least six
embrasured windows, three in the north wall, one in the east wall
and two in the south wall; the foundation of the west wall is too
low for evidence of fenestration. The doorway into the projecting
turret at basement level (Fig. 7) is slightly off‐centre (to the south)
in the east wall of the
donjon, reflecting the one‐time presence ofan east‐west partition in the basement room, mainly to carry the
north‐south timbers of the floor of the large room (the hall) above.
This partition may have been of stone and arcuated: scarring high
up on the north side of this doorway is possibly from the springing
of an arch. There is no evidence that vaults were built in the late
middle ages over the two long spaces created by this partition, as
was done in the 1400s in very many other comparably‐large
thirteenth‐century castle‐buildings (including Maynooth castle, Co.
Kildare, a building which we will discuss presently as a parallel for
Coonagh).
The projecting turret contains at basement level a small chamber
which had a large‐beamed timber ceiling holding up a mass of stone
above. This was lit from the east by a more finely‐crafted
rectangular window than one normally finds at basement level in
early thirteenth‐century towers. An external doorway leading into
this chamber from the south is a fifteenth‐century insertion; it is
now broken and blocked (Fig. 8); an arch built high above the space
between the south‐eastern pilaster and the projecting turret is also
late medieval in date and was a form of machicolation overlooking
this inserted doorway. In the north‐western corner of the
projecting turret, partly within it (though originally partitioned‐off
by a narrow wall, only the stub of which remains) but partly also in
the east wall of the tower, is the lower part of the exceptionally
well‐built spiral stairs. This stairs is noteworthy for its substantial
newel post, possibly the widest example of its date in Ireland, and
its tunnel‐vaulted roof, both broken in places as the stairs ascends
(Fig. 9).
Access to the main basement of the
donjon in the thirteenthcentury would have been from above: towers and halls of that
vintage were customarily entered at first‐floor level and the
basements were accessed by descending stairs; an exception is
Grenan, Co. Kilkenny, contemporary with Coonagh
49. The spiralstairs in the projecting turret obviously provided one means of
access to the basement from above, but there are two reasons why
it could not have been the only access. First, it is apparent from
evidence higher up the building that this stairs was somewhat
exclusive, and that neither it nor the doors connected to it was
designed to allow people traipse in and out of the
donjon and itshall; the quality of the newel post reinforces this impression of
exclusivity. Second, the doorway between the stairs and the
basement bolted from the west side (the interior of the
donjon),which means that this door was designed to provide access
to thestairs rather than
from it, an impractical arrangement if thesurviving stairs offered the only access to the basement. It is fairly
certain, then, that the principal access to the basement originally
was a (mural?) stairway descending from first‐floor level at the
now‐lost
west end of the donjon. It is unusual to find two doorwaysinto a
donjon (or donjon‐like building) as is suggested here50, butCoonagh is unusual anyway in having a projecting turret, much of it
solid masonry.
The hall
The first‐floor room in the
donjon can be described as the castle’shall. Before proceeding to a description, it is helpful to clarify the
general relationship between function and architecture in medieval
castle halls.
In the middle ages the hall was the space in a castle which was used
– in some castles occasionally, in others regularly – for functions
which were overtly performative and ritualised, and which we
might describe in modern parlance as ‘public’: the formal receiving
of visitors, feasting, prosecuting the business of the castle or the
estate, and so on
51. The castle hall thus had a symbolic role as wellas a practical role, and that was underscored and enhanced by its
setting, either in a long rectangular building of church‐like character
or as the central and pivotal room in a tower. The relationships
between halls and domestic or residential spaces in castles, or more
especially between the spaces of public and private performance,
are exceedingly complex, but suffice it to say here that castles of
middle‐ and high‐ranking lords of the thirteenth century normally
had residential units (chambers) separate from the halls. That 1278
reference to a ‘ower and house’at Coonagh noted above suggests,
even before one inspects the building, that the ‘ower’ by
definition a tall and ostentatious structure, contained the castle’
hall, and that the ‘ouse’contained the castle’ chamber and was a
separate structure. That ‘ouse’at Coonagh is gone, but we will
presently see the evidence that places its site to the south of the
donjon
. The donjon is, of course, the ‘tower’ documented atCoonagh, and the hall is that first‐floor room to which we will now
turn.
Coonagh’ hall was heated by a fine hooded fireplace midway along
its north wall (Fig. 10). This is an early example of its type: such
fireplaces were especially common in Ireland (as indeed in England)
after the date of Coonagh’ construction –there are mid‐ and late
thirteenth‐century examples at Ferns Castle, Co. Wexford, and in
Ballymoon and Ballyloughan Castles, Co. Carlow, respectively
52 –but the Coonagh example appears structurally to be original, and in
any case the post‐1234 history of Coonagh suggests there was little
opportunity or inclination to make elaborate changes to its design
or architectural furnishing
53.Beside the fireplace to its left (or east) was an embrasured and
seated window (Fig. 10). The actual window is now broken, but the
window in the opposite wall, which is of similar internal design,
retains its exterior: a chamfered round‐arched opening (with
original bar‐holes) set in a deep and undressed external rebate (Fig.
11).
The hall’ interior was accessible through a (now‐blocked)
segmental‐arched doorway positioned centrally in the east wall
(see Fig. 7), and this led off the spiral stairs in the projecting turret
(Fig. 12). The mid‐1220s is quite early for a segmental‐arched
opening in Ireland but there is no structural reason to doubt that it
is an original feature of Coonagh’
donjon, and circumstantialhistorical evidence would again support this view. Given its size and
positioning, this doorway was an exclusive entrance point to the
hall, and can be described legitimately as a processional doorway,
intended for use by William and Matilda and their innermost circle.
We will see below the evidence which suggests strongly that they
entered the
donjon via the projecting turret, and then descendedtowards the hall, entering through this doorway.
As suggested already, the main entrance into the hall for most of its
thirteenth‐century users would have been at the opposite end from
this processional doorway, and indeed it would have been the main
entrance from the outside into the
donjon itself; the modern use ofthe term ‘hall’, which seems completely at odds with the medieval
meaning, probably originates in the fact that for most
contemporaries the entry into many medieval buildings was directly
into the hall. First‐floor entrances in Ireland are usually at the sides
of long walls, in line with the general practice in Norman and
Angevin England, but there is probably insufficient room at the
west end of the south wall at Coonagh for a substantial outside
doorway, so we should reconstruct a west‐wall entrance instead,
reached by timber stairs.
Coonagh’ hall was timber‐floored. Reconstructing its ceiling or roof
is more problematic, however, and will might only be resolved (if at
all) by an examination from scaffolding of the fabric. A series of
horizontal chases along the side and end walls of the hall, about
3.0m above the original floor level and roughly halfway up the full
internal height of the tower (Fig. 13), seem at first glance to mark
the positions of floor timbers, suggesting a low timber ceiling rather
than a high roof. However, it is difficult to see how these could have
been for flooring: first, they are too shallow to take substantial
joists; second, they are at the same horizontal level all around
whereas floor‐timber sockets need to be staggered between the
long and short walls; third, the space above them had too little
fenestration –there is a single window opening at the west end of
the north wall –to be a functional room. Not dissimilar wall‐chases
in comparable position at Maynooth have posed similar problems
of interpretation, with David Sweetman suggesting that they
belonged to a gallery, but Con Manning suggesting they supported
a hipped roof overlooked from some height by the parapets
54. Wecould imagine a roof of this design at Coonagh, and so add it to the
list to thirteenth‐century towers and halls with low roofs inside high
walls
55. However, a broad band of plaster work on the east wallabove the hall (visible in Fig. 13), presumably of thirteenth‐century
date, is not consistent with a low roof. On balance, then, the
likelihood is that there was a gallery running around the inside of
the hall in Coonagh at a high level, lit by the window in the north
wall of the tower, and that the (hipped) roof was above this again,
supported in part on the timber work of the gallery and in part on
upright timbers running along the middle of the floor of the hall
below.
Although it seems to have been one open‐planned room with no
very strong separation between ‘igh end’and ‘ow end’such as
one finds in English halls
56, the east end of Coonagh’s hall wasactually demarcated symbolically as a marginally more private
space. The elements of demarcation were the processional
doorway, the private chapel (discussed below) and, not least, the
mural passage at gallery level; such passages tend to be associated
with the smaller and more private spaces created by partitions at
first‐ and second‐floor levels in great towers in England, as at
Bowes and Porchester (see Fig.23: h, i). This symbolic infiltration of
the private realm into the floor‐space of Coonagh’ hall should be
read as a sign that this hall was not conceived of as a public space
(in the sense that, say, the fourteenth‐century great hall at Trim
Castle, Co. Meath, would have served public functions
57) but as aspace for the household – a form of private hall – in which such
public and ceremonial duties as the receiving of guests were
accommodated.
The mural passages, fore‐building and timber chapel
The spiral stairs in the projecting turret ascends beyond the
processional doorway to a vaulted mural passage running the entire
width of the tower and located directly behind the putative gallery
(Fig. 14). At either end of the passage and within the corner
pilasters are small pointed‐vaulted chambers. Apart from small
rectangular windows, these are featureless. At the north end of this
passage a small opening, squinched across the interior corner of the
tower, led into a projecting latrine box, was machicolated on two
substantial timbers, the sockets of which survive; there is a very
good parallel of
c.1240 in Kinlough Castle, Co. Mayo (Fig. 15). In thelater middle ages the back wall of Coonagh’s latrine box was
removed and replaced with a blocking wall (with a window) which
was flush with the side walls.
Leading off the long mural passage is a shorter and narrower
passage, also vaulted, which runs eastwards through the mass of
the projecting turret and out now into open space. The exit of this
passage is the smaller of the two arched openings visible high up on
the eastern face of the turret; the other arched opening on that
outside wall was a niche (Fig. 16). Two parallel rows of beamsockets
high up on the exterior of the projecting eastern turret and
clustered around both the exit of the passage and the blind arch tell
us of the one‐time existance of a substantial timber structure. The
upper floor –the
only floor? – of this structure was level with boththe floor of the passage and the base of the blind arch. The roof
above had a simple pitch, the crease of which can still be discerned
higher up on the exterior of the projecting turret. The
constructional technique of the entire structure cannot now be
known, but the use of principal timbers suggests cage‐work.
The east‐facing window at basement level in the projecting turret
indicates that the timber structure did not extend to ground level as
it would have blocked light into the base of the stairwell. Therefore,
the structure either overhung in the manner of a gallery or
hoarding
58 or, more likely, was held up from below on substantialtimber beams. Access was by stairs ascending from the south: an
angled scar on the east face of the pilaster to the south of
projecting turret remains from the structure containing this stairs.
It is clear that this whole structure was a timber forebuilding with
access stairs (Fig. 17). Its connection to the main, newel‐posted
stairs and, from there, to the processional doorway into the hall
means that it provided the route by which William and Matilda and
their inner circle accessed the interior of the
donjon. Thisconclusion requires us to reverse in our minds the direction in
which the great stairs spirals: we perceive it today as ascending
through the building from basement level to parapet level, but, in
terms of its usage, it actually originated at mural‐passage level,
ascending and descending from there, but mainly descending one
floor to the hall; the photograph of the processional doorway in
Figure 12 thus shows it as it was approached, not as it appeared
looking back at it. All other users of and visitors to the hall entered
from the opposite, western end of the
donjon. The position of theoutside
stairs to this forebuilding indicates that William and Matildaapproached from the south, appropriately the opposite side from
the latrine. If the
donjon is the ‘tower’ mentioned in 1278, the‘house’ referred to at that time was presumably their residence
(chamber), and it would have been to the south of the
donjon.The blind arch remains to be explained. The likely explanation is
that this was an aedicule associated with a small chapel or oratory
occupying the north side of the interior of the forebuilding and
oriented west‐east. Private chapels in castles are commonly
associated with entrances, not least (but certainly not exclusively)
in Norman and Angevin England
59. Coonagh’s would have beensmall, but with an estaimated area of about 12m
2 it would still havebeen more than twice the size of the chapel in contemporary
Grenan Castle. The chapel in the stone forebuilding attached to the
great royal tower of Porchester Castle in Hampshire
60 is anindicative if earlier (
c.1130) parallel for Coonagh (Fig. 18). Althoughlacking a back‐wall aedicule, another probable parallel is the stone
forebuilding, now destroyed, at Maynooth Castle; there, at firstfloor
level, the room to the south of the entrance into the hall is
best identified, according to its position and orientation, as a chapel
(Fig. 19).
The upper levels
The spiral stairs continued to ascend for a little less than full
rotation past the mural passage. The newel post and the steps are
all missing now, and so the upper levels are inaccessible except by
ladder. The extent of thirteenth‐century work beyond the broken
steps is difficult to determine. At the point at which the spiral stairs
stops, a straight flight of steps ascends at an angle back towards the
south‐west, away from the turret and back towards the east wall of
the great tower. The evidence for a slab‐roof overhead suggests it is
later medieval, but the steps lead in the direction of thirteenthcentury
work in the south‐east corner of the tower (the outline of a
thirteenth‐century merlon remians in the south face of the south
pilaster/turret), so may be original to the building, albeit re‐roofed
during the fifteenth century. When this flight of steps reaches the
east wall of the tower, it turns southwards to continue a short
ascent as a straight mural stairs. Again, the roofing is late medieval,
but the steps and the side walls are likely to be original, as they lead
to a shallow landing with a rough mortar surface of thirteenthcentury
date. Impressions in this surface of three great timber
beams from the timber hoarding that circled the building, two at
90° to the outside wall, and one at 45°, suggests that this mortared
surface is all that remains of the floor level inside the wall of the
tower that was level with the floor of the parapet hoarding as
reconstructed in Figure 17. There is a big step‐up from this
mortared surface onto the lower level of the next stair, a spiral
which is probably late medieval.
The most substantial later medieval alteration to Coonagh was
made to the top of the eastern turret. The two thin‐walled upper
rooms in the turret –indeed, the only rooms in the turret –have
late medieval features, including an arcuated parapet support
inside the upper room. The doorway into that upper room has a
shouldered arch, and while this type of arch is found
c.1300 (the socalled‘Caernarvon arches’ at Ballymoon Castle, Co. Carlow
61), thereare later examples and variations, such as Caheradangan (aka
Strongfort) Castle, a tower‐house in Co. Galway. One cannot
distinguish a change in fabric on the exterior, or easily interpret the
complexities of fabric on the interior so it is conceivable that these
spaces are thirteenth‐century and that the openings and the
arcuation are the alterations. However, it is difficult to see how
these spaces may have been accessed from the main stairs in the
turret below, and on that basis they are provisionally adjudged here
to be late medieval additions.
Interpretations: Coonagh
donjon in contextA high‐ranking English visitor to Coonagh Castle in 1230 would have
been surprised to learn that it was a new building; had Otho de
Grandison visited it –he might never have been there, although he
owned it –he would surely, at least on his approach to it, have
thought it much more than fifty‐odd years old. While the historical
evidence points to a date for Coonagh in the 1220s, it is a building
which looks back in time, stylistically and conceptually, not forward,
as we will see from the survey of its closest parallels. The only
original features of its thirteenth‐century architecture which could
be described as up‐to‐date, even slightly precocious, are the
segmental‐arched processional doorway and hooded fireplace in
the hall. Indeed, their location
inside the hall makes one wonder ifthis space, the pivotal space in the
donjon, was designed with aknowing modernity to counterbalance the archaisms of the
exterior. It is striking how, for example, the exterior of the window
in the south wall of the hall, as old‐fashioned for
c.1225 as thehooded fireplace inside the hall was contemporary, would not look
out of place in a twelfth‐century English ‘omanesque’castlebuilding
62.The point about Coonagh’s backward stylistic glance is well made
by comparisons between it and the
donjon at Chambois (Fig. 20), anEnglish (and English‐style
donjon) built on French soil in the 1170sby William de Mandeville, earl of Essex and a trusted ally of Henry
II
63. It and Coonagh are almost exactly the same size (the former isexternally 20m by 15m, and the latter is externally 21.4m by
15.4m), and it shares with Coonagh the use of clasping pilasters
with small internal rooms, a projecting mid‐wall turret (also slightly
south of centre) with an entrance and a chapel (the stone stairs in
Chambois is, however, an insertion), and the idea of the long‐wall
hooded fireplace. There were de Mandeville possessions in Ireland,
mainly in Ulster but also apparently in north Tipperary
64, but theevidence does not allow us suggest the Limerick castle was built
with particular cognisance of Chambois. Nonetheless, the not
inconsiderable similarities between Coonagh and Chambois
underscore both the ‘Englishness’ of the former’s architecture
65 andits somewhat anachronistic appearance for
c.1225.Reinforcing the point, there are features or aspects of Coonagh
which can be paralleled in two of the small number of Irish castlebuildings
still surviving from the late 1100s. Viewed from afar,
Coonagh is visually similar to the
donjon at Trim, Co. Meath,especially as it appeared after the final major de Lacy alterations
were made to it in the early 1200s
66 (Fig. 21). While theresemblance is partly a product of (and is therefore somewhat
negated by) the raising of Coonagh’s pilasters as high turrets in the
late middle ages, the counterbalance is that the two
donjons wouldprobably look more alike were we able to properly visualise their
original and extensive timberwork. In terms of detail and microplanning,
the two buildings are quite un‐alike inside, except insofar
as they both possessed features which one customarily finds in big
towers of the late 1100s and early 1200s, such as basement
partitions and long mural passages at upper‐floor level. However,
the two spiral stairs in Trim, one serving the more public (hall) half
of the
donjon and the other the more private (chamber) part, maybe related conceptually to the use of two upper‐floor entrances,
each with its own stairs, at Coonagh. There was a familial
connection between the de Lacys and the de Mariscos –William de
Marisco’ step‐mother was Alice, a sister of Hugh de Lacy II
67 – butwe need not defer to that in order to explain those similarities of
appearance. Perhaps the best judgement to make of Coonagh as
viewed through the lens of Trim is that William de Marisco aspired
to possess a castle with the grandeur associated with the top
echelon of baronial castles, and none had greater grandeur, nor
was presumably better known in Ireland at that time, than Trim,
itself designed surely to emulate the great towers of Henry II,
especially Orford (built in the 1160s) and Dover (built in the
1180s)
68.The other late twelfth‐century Irish parallel for Coonagh is the great
focal building at Maynooth, described by McNeill as a ‘irst‐floor
hall’and by Sweetman as a ‘all‐keep’
69. This is usually dated to justafter 1200 but, given its architectural relationship with Trim, it is
surely a work of the late twelfth century
70. As noted already,Maynooth and Coonagh appear to have shared hipped roofs inside
high parapet walls as well as forebuilding‐chapels. Evidence for
external timberwork at Maynooth is negligible, certainly compared
with Coonagh (and Trim), but it might be relevant to note that its
upper hall had, in addition to the two doorways connected to its
forebuilding (one the main entrance and the other for the chapel),
yet another doorway in its north wall, on the outside of which must
have been timber structure. This feature, which has not been
commented on in the literature, is located in what was clearly the
higher status area at first‐floor level. It may have been the entrance
into a timber‐surrounded oriel window which looked northwards
towards a possible deerpark and north‐eastwards towards the
contemporary parish church at Laraghbryan. Alternatively, it may
have been an independent entrance directly into the hall from
outside, in which case it would have been an entrance for the
castle’ lord. The possibility of two main entrances into the hall at
Maynooth affirms the conceptual links between it and Coonagh,
even if the more private entrance at the latter was the one
accompaned by the chapel.
The most important Irish castle of the early thirteenth century from
the perspective of understanding Coonagh is probably Adare Castle,
Co. Limerick, the first Anglo‐Norman phases of which (Fig. 22) are
attributed, at least by implication of its architectural dating, to
Geoffrey de Marisco, William’ father
71. Two buildings at Adare areof relevance: the earlier of the two rectangular halls on the
riverbank, and the tower in its inner enclosure. The former was a
two‐storeyed structure, slightly longer than Coonagh internally but
almost the same width, with a hall at upper‐floor level. Refectorylike
in girth and fenestration, it bears no obvious stylistic
relationship to Coonagh, except that it had a hipped roof
72, asCoonagh and Maynooth appear to have had. The tower at Adare
73was also originally a two‐floored building, but was tall, with a
pitched (rather than hipped) roof low inside its parapets. Barely
rectangular in plan, its simple superstructure had articulating
corner pilasters projecting sideways from the end walls. The
presence of broadly comparable pilasters on two Co. Limerick
donjons
built by Geoffrey de Marisco’s sons – Coonagh andCorcomohide, the latter discussed at length below – suggests that
the Adare tower was Geoffrey’s work and was built in the first
quarter of the thirteenth century, possibly as early as c.1200 but
more likely perhaps in the 1210s or even 1220s
74.Coonagh and Corcomohide are two of six castle‐buildings in Ireland
(Fig. 23 a‐f) with clasping pilasters, corner articulations which not
unlike and certainly not unrelated to those which we see in the
tower at Adare
75. Many, possibly all, date from the 1220s or 1230s.Starting at the north, Greencastle, Co. Down, was built between
1226 and 1242, while Clough, in the same county, is undated except
generally to the early 1200s
76. Castlekirke, Co. Galway, wasprobably built in 1232
77. Clonmacnoise, Co. Offaly, was extant by1233, and might even have been built under Geoffrey de Marisco’s
guidance as justiciar, between 1215 and 1221
78. Coonagh datesfrom
c.1225 as noted already. Finally, Corcomohide, as we will see,is of about the same date.
The clasping pilaster is not an insignificant point of comparison
between these buildings. On the contrary, such pilasters are among
the most distinctive features of eleventh‐ and twelfth‐century,
Norman and Angevin, castles and churches in England, sometimes
fronting stairs and mural chambers (thanks to the extra wall
thickness that they provided), and always providing visual
articulation. Because these pilasters are so common in halls,
donjons
and other focal buildings of English castles (Fig. 23 g‐i), thesmall number of examples in Ireland assumes particular
significance. In visual appearance and in architectural design, they
are among the most ‘nglish’ but also among the most
anachronistically‐conceptualised, of castles in thirteenth‐century
Ireland
79.The use of these pilasters at William de Marisco’s Coonagh is
unquestionably a product of their use (albeit in slightly different
form) in Geoffrey de Marisco’s Adare; the son was, in other words,
emulating one of the most visually distinctive features of his
father’s castle. Coonagh was, in its entirety, a much smaller castle
than Adare, but its tower, while reflecting its builder’s patrimony
through its use of pilasters, was physically bigger than Adare’s, it
was roofed differently, it possessed a more sophisticated social
geography, and it nodded stylistically towards the truly
monumental
donjons built under Angevin lordship. So, while itseems likely that masons moved from Adare to Coonagh, we should
interpret differences of treatment, and indeed differences between
the two buildings in general, as evidence that William de Marisco
had seen other buildings during his minority, and that he engaged
the services of a master mason whose
curriculum vitae includedwork other than Adare.
The masons who built Coonagh can certainly be identified at the
third Limerick castle to possess the corner pilasters: the muchreduced
donjon
in Castletown Conyers, close to Ballyagran in thesouth of the county (Fig. 24). This was originally the seigneurial
castle of the manor of Corcomohide, and it is given that name here
in preference to its current name, Conyers, which is derived from
an eighteenth‐century patronym
80. Like Coonagh, it is another littleknowncastle, but is also misunderstood
81. There is no earlyreference to it, and indeed Westropp pointed out that
Corcomohide was one of the manors of thirteenth‐century Limerick
in which no contemporary castle is mentioned
82, but the stonecastle was certainly there in the first half of the thirteenth century,
alongside a motte‐castle, its obvious predecessor, and a thirteenthcentury
parish church. Corcomohide, or ‘orkmoid’ was named as
a borough in 1321, the year of an extent
83, but it presumably hadthis status in the previous century. There is no evidence of a
settlement today. The village of Bruree was apparently the main
nucleated settlement in the cantred of Brouury in which
Corcomohide is located, but Corcomohide itself was almost
certainly the capital manor. This may be another example, then, like
Okonagh and Imokilly, of the geographical separation of the
caputand main town. The motte, which is small in size and may always
have been so, must have been the castle of Hamo de Valoignes, the
original grantee of this land in 1199
84, and the stone castle must beassigned to his successor, John de Marisco, and to a date before
1234
85. The castle is today an ivy‐entangled building, now reducedto its lower storey, but it resembles Coonagh in many aspects of its
plan and superstructure, and especially in some apparent
idiosyncrasies of design. Like Coonagh, it has (or
had) a towerprojecting from the centre of its east wall, probably with a groundfloor
entrance, though not originally so (see Fig. 25), an ascending
spiral stairs in the north‐west corner of this projecting turret, four
corner pilasters, and a north‐wall latrine. The most compelling
evidence of a link between Coonagh and Corcomohide is in the
similarities of micro‐planning: both buildings have the exact same
orientation (±4°), their north walls are thinner than their south
walls, and the central axes of their projecting eastern towers are
slightly south of centre of their eastern walls. There are also
differences, of course, between the buildings –Corcomohide’
latrine had a mural chute rather than a floorless projecting
machicolation, for example –but they are not so significant when
weighed against the similarities. It seems certain, then, that
Coonagh and Corcomohide, castles of two of Geoffrey de Marisco’
sons, were built under the guidance of the same master mason, and
perhaps physically by the same group of masons, using a template
that was possessed in ‘ard copy’or was retained in the memory
with great mental exactness.
Coonagh
donjon and the rituals of lordshipSo far we have identified parallels for the tower at Coonagh, but
there remains the very important question of the building’s
function. For students of medieval Ireland – historians and
archaeologists – it is not the parallels for Coonagh that matter so
much as the
meanings of those parallels. Those meanings derivefrom, relate to, and articulate, Coonagh’s medieval functions. Here,
the temptation to revert to the traditional view of the medieval
Irish castle as essentially a fortress containing habitable space
86,and therefore to presume that Coonagh’s function is self‐evident,
must be resisted as stoutly as it has been resisted, even repelled, in
recent years in English castle‐scholarship
87. Nobody could deny thatmedieval castles were created in, and so expressed through
architectural invention the values of, militarised social‐political
environments, or that they had within them men who bore arms
and who were expected to kill, but the point increasingly being
made by English scholars is that militarism was so imbricated with
other aspects of medieval culture, including especially the symbolic
and performative, that ‘he castle’ as both a physical building and a
mental construct, cannot possibly be comprehended by an
interpretative foregrounding of its militaristic roles
88. Suffice it tosay that if this is demonstrably true of England, it is no less true of
castles and castle‐culture in Ireland
89. So, to describe the tower atCoonagh as a fortress, and to conceive of it principally in terms of
aggressive Anglo‐Norman land‐grabbing and land‐defending in east
Munster, is to underrate the richness of the cultural ideas
embodied in its design, and the diversity of practices for which it
provided both containment and theatrical stage.
Demonstrably designed to accommodate and ornament seigneurial
life, rather than merely protect it, the surviving structure at
Coonagh fully merits description as a
donjon, a term which, throughits etymological link with
dominion, privileges the display andperformance of lordship
90. The scale of the building, and thecontribution of this to its visibility in the landscape, was one
element in its symbolic effecting of lordly power, albeit an
important one. Judging by the contemporary topography, the tower
was visible from the south, presumably the side with the passing
traffic between Limerick city and Tipperary town. The fact that it
was also markedly visible from the east, the side of the manor’s
parish church,
and that its great raised entrance and accompanyingchapel were visible from the church, reminds us that its primary
audience was probably a quiescent Anglo‐Norman audience, not a
hostile ‘ative’audience.
It was also mainly an Anglo‐Norman audience which bore witness
to, and comprehended, the rituals of the tower’ use during the
decade or so that it was a fully‐functioning seigneurial property. It is
clear that William and Matilda entered the great building from the
south –the side of warmth and light, and the side symbolic of
masculine power in a patrimonial society, according to a
structuralist reading of architecture
91 – via a forebuilding in whichwas contained a private chapel, the parish church visible through its
east window. Their entry into the
donjon duly sanctified, theydescended into the mural passage that ran north‐south and
terminated in small chambers of uncertain function, with that to
the north –the side of coldness and darkness, the cardinal direction
equivalent to ‘he left side’or (in Latin)
sinister side – being themore spatially distant and having a toilet adjacent to it. They then
descended – again a symbolic movement – to the west‐facing
processional doorway into the hall, to feast or to receive an
audience which must have entered from the opposite, west, end.
Their business done, they departed through the same processional
doorway and headed for their chamber, the ‘ouse’that was still
there in 1278. It is an inescapable conclusion, then, that Coonagh’
symbolic gestures of authority to its Anglo‐Norman audience were
vested as much in the performative use of the building as in the
inert architectural structure itself.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks to Trevor Anderson, Coonagh Castle’ owner, for
allowing me unimpeded access, and to Donal Anderson for his
hospitality on repeated visits, and for providing the ladders which
allowed me inspect the upper parts of the
donjon. I am grateful toDr David Whelan and Karen Dempsey, research students past and
current, for helping me to record the building, and to David for a
number of the photographs published here.
1
Tom McNeill, Castles in Ireland (London, 1997); David Sweetman, The Medieval Castles ofIreland
(Cork, 1999).2
Thomas Westropp knew of it (‘The ancient castles of the county of Limerick (north‐easternbaronies)’
PRIA 26 (1906‐07), 55‐108, at 101‐2; ‘he principal ancient castles of the countyLimerick’
JRSAI 30 (1907), 22‐40, at 31‐32) but regarded it as a tower‐house, probablybecause he relied on the description of it in the Ordnance Survey Letters, rather than on a
site‐visit of his own. Local‐historical studies in 1988 and 1990 (Michael O’wyer, ‘acBrien I
Cuanach’
The Lough Gur and District Historical Society, 20‐23; 4 (1988), and Anon.,‘astletown’
Dún Bleisce: A History (Cumann Forbartha Dhún Bleisce, Doon, 1990), 99‐114,at 99‐105) presumed a late medieval date, although the latter presented sufficient visual
evidence for it to be dated to the 1200s. Colm Donnelly listed it as a tower‐house (‘
typological study of the tower houses of county Limerick’
JRSAI 129 (1999), 19‐39, at 38.Neither McNeill (
Castles in Ireland) nor Sweetman (Medieval Castles) mention it. Mike Salteridentified it as ‘Norman’ and
c.1200 in date less than a decade ago (The Castles of NorthMunster
(Malvern, 2004), 76‐77).3
Paul MacCotter, Medieval Ireland. Territorial, Political and Economic Divisions (Dublin,2008), 215.
4
Cal. docs Ire., 1171‐1251, no. 621. See also C.A. Empey, ‘The settlement of the kingdom ofLimerick’ in James Lydon (ed.),
England and Ireland in the Later Middle Ages (Dublin, 1981),1‐25, at 6, 13.
5
John Bradley, ‘The medieval towns of Tipperary’ in William Nolan & Thomas G. McGrath(eds),
Tipperary: History and Society (Dublin, 1985), 34‐59, at 56; Adrian Empey, ‘heNorman period: 1185‐1500’in Nolan & McGrath,
Tipperary, 71‐91, at Map 5.1.6
Cal. docs Ire., 1171‐1251, no. 621; Archbishop Alen’s Register, 38.7
M. Hennessy, ‘Manorial organisation in early thirteenth‐century Tipperary’ IrishGeography
29, 2 (1996), 116‐125, at 120.8
For its location see Goddard H. Orpen, ‘The site of Castle Blathac’, JRSAI 44 (1914), 167‐70.9
Eric St. John Brooks, ‘Archbishop Henry of London and his Irish connections’, JRSAI 60(1930), 1‐22, at 15‐16. Matilda was identified as Henry’ niece by Goddard Orpen (
IrelandUnder the Normans
, III (Oxford, 1920), 27), and initially by Brooks as well (‘Henry of London’,7), but the latter subsequently revised his view and claimed her as a near‐relation (‘he
family of Marisco’
JRSAI 62 (1932), 50‐74, at 61).10
Cal. docs Ire., 1171‐1251, no. 2747.11
Cal. docs Ire., 1171‐1251, no. 1397; see also Brooks, ‘Henry of London’, 15.12
Cal. docs Ire., 1171‐1251, nos 1383, 1415.13
Brooks, ‘Family of Marisco’, note 27.14
Cal. docs Ire., 1171‐1251, no. 2228.15
T. O'Keeffe, ‘Space, place, habitus: geographies of practice in an Anglo‐Normanlandscape’ in H.B. Clarke, J. Prunty & M. Hennessy (eds),
Surveying Ireland’s Past. MultidisciplinaryEssays in Honour of Anngret Simms
(Dublin, 2004), 73‐98, at 76‐7716
Empey, ‘Norman period’, 71.17
Pipe Roll, 19 Hen Ill: 35th Report Dep. Keeper of the Records of Ireland, at 35.18
F.W. Maitland, ‘The murder of Henry Clement’, EHR 10, 38 (1895), 294‐7.19
F.M. Powicke, ‘The murder of Henry Clement and the pirates of Lundy Island’, History 25(1941), 285–310.
20
Brooks, ‘Family of Marisco’, 18.21
Cal. docs Ire., 1171‐1251, no. 2328.22
Cal. docs Ire., 1171‐1251, no. 2347.23
Archbishop Alen’s Register, 66‐7.24
Cal. docs Ire., 1171‐1251, no. 2684.25
Brooks, ‘Henry of London’, note 125.26
Archbishop Alen’s Register, 81.27
This is not the only documented surrender of land in Okonagh to Luke: between 1228 and1255 (but probably around 1243/44), one John de Kvlpek/Kylpech surrendered by quit‐claim
to Luke his land in ‘allyokargille’in Okonagh:
Archbishop Alen’s Register, 78.28
Archbishop Alen’s Register, 85.29
Cal. docs Ire., 1171‐1251, no. 1485.30
Cal. docs Ire., 1171‐1251, no. 2805.31
Cal. docs Ire., 1171‐1251, no. 2747.32
Cal. docs Ire., 1171‐1251, no. 3053.33
Cal. docs Ire., 1171‐1251, no. 3108. Archbishop Alen’s Register, 7434
Cal. docs Ire., 1252‐84, 2.35
Michael Prestwich, Edward I (Berkeley and LA, 1988), 11.36
Cal. docs Ire., 1252‐84, no. 66437
Cal. docs Ire., 1252‐84, no. 1516.38
The role of Ireland as an Edwardian ‘laboratory’ for experimentation in architectural andurban design is discussed in T. O’Keeffe, ‘Landscapes, castles and towns of Edward I in Wales
and Ireland: some comparisons and connections’,
Landscapes 11, 2 (2011), 60‐72.39
Cal. docs Ire., 1252‐84, no. 184740
Cal. docs Ire., 1285‐92, no. 705; also, G. Dorens, ‘Sir Otho de Grandison 1238? – 1328’,Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
3 (1909), 125‐95, at 129.41
Cal. docs Ire., 1293‐1301, no. 646.42
For his career see Ester Rowland Clifford, A Knight of Great Renown: the Life and Time sofOthon de Grandson
(Chicago, 1961).43
Cal. docs Ire., 1285‐92, no. 693.44
Cal. docs Ire., 1285‐92, no. 591.45
Cal. docs Ire., 1285‐92, no. 569.46
Cal. docs Ire., 1285‐92, no. 706.47
Cal. docs Ire., 1302‐07, no. 71948
Westropp, ‘Ancient castles (north‐eastern baronies)’ 102.49
D. Waterman, ‘Rectangular keeps of the thirteenth century at Grenan (Kilkenny) andGlanworth (Cork)’,
JRSAI 98 (1968), 67‐73.50
The form was used occasionally in Norman contexts (as at Chepstow in south Wales in thelate 1000s) and may have been used in Maynooth (see p. x).
51
There is a substantial literature on halls and their functions, including Margaret Wood, TheEnglish Medieval House
(London, 1965), 16‐66, and Michael Thompson, The Medieval Hall.The Basis of Secular Domestic Life, 600‐1600 AD
(Aldershot, 1995).52
T. O’Keeffe & M. Coughlan, ‘The chronology and formal affinities of the Ferns donjon, Co.Wexford, in John Kenyon & Kieran D. O’Conor (eds),
The Medieval Castle in Ireland andWales. Essays in Honour of Jeremy Knight
(Dublin, 2003), 133‐48; T. O'Keeffe, ‘allyloughan,Ballymoon and Clonmore: three castles of
c.1300 in county Carlow’, Anglo‐Norman Studies23 (2001), 167‐97.
53
An early date is not problematic: see the late twelfth‐ or early thirteenth‐century examplein Boothby Pagnall (R. Harris & E. Impey, ‘oothby Pagnall revisited’ in Meirion‐Jones et al.,
Seigneurial Residence in Western Europe
, 245‐69, at 247.54
Con Manning, ‘Low‐level roofs in Irish great towers’ Château Gaillard 20 (2002), 137‐40,at 138‐9.
55
To Manning’s preliminary list can probably be added Walterstown Castle, Nurney, Co.Kildare, of which the only publication seems to be a grainy photograph in Mike Salter,
TheCastles of Leinster
(Malvern, 2004), at 54.56
Wood, English Medieval House, 16‐66.57
Sweetman, Medieval Castles, 46.58
An external timber gallery or ‘walkway’ supported on similar projecting joists, includingthree in the outer face (placed identically to those at Coonagh), has been reconstructed at
Deerhurst (M. Hare, ‘The 9th‐century west porch of St Mary’ Church, Deerhurst,
Gloucestershire: form and function’
Medieval Archaeology 53 (2009), 35‐93).59
See N.J.G. Pounds, The Medieval Castle in England and Wales: a Social and Political History(Cambridge, 1994), 224‐31; S. Speight, ‘eligion in the bailey: charters, chapels and the
clergy’
Château Gaillard 21 (2004), 271‐280. See also P. Durand, ‘a protection religieuse del'entrée du château à l'époque romane en Haut‐Poitou’
Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale 31(1988), 201‐212.
60
John Goodall, Porchester Castle (English Heritage, London, 2003).61
H.G. Leask, ‘Ballymoon Castle, County Carlow’, JRSAI 74 (1944), 183–190.62
The Coonagh window is unique in Ireland. Wide and round‐arched external rebates of theCoonagh type are fairly common in English castles of the 1100s, but they usually frame twinlight
windows. The only Irish parallel for this might have been at Ballyderown Castle, Co.
Cork, built
c.1200 (see T. O’Keeffe, ‘An early Anglo‐Norman castle at Ballyderown, countyCork’
JRSAI 114 (1984), 48‐56) where two big hall windows with external roll mouldingsprobably each have had recessed twin‐lights.
63
J. Decaëns, ‘Le donjon de Chambois’, in M. Baylé (ed), L’Architecture Normande au MoyenÂge
(Paris, 1994), ii, 320–2; Daniel Power, ‘Henry, Duke of the Normans (1149/50‐1189)’ inC. Harper Bill & N. Vincent (eds),
Henry II: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 2007), 85‐128,at 93.
64
A. Gwynn, ‘Henry of London, Archbishop of Dublin’, Studies: an Irish Quarterly Review 38(1949), 389‐402 at 91; for the family see K. Nicholls, ‘bstracts of Mandeville Deeds’
Analecta Hibernica
32 (1985), 3‐26.65
More work needs to be done, however, on direct connections between castles in France,within and outside ‘English’ territories, and Ireland: such connections are discussed
inter aliain O’Keeffe & Coughlan, ‘Ferns
donjon‘, and T. O’Keeffe, ‘Dublin Castle's donjon in context’,in John Bradley, Alan Fletcher & Anngret Simms (eds),
Dublin in the Medieval World: Studiesin Honour of Howard B. Clarke
(Dublin, 2009), 277‐94.66
Kevin O’Brien, Trim Castle, Co. Meath (Dublin, 2002); for reflections on Hugh de Lacy’soriginal intentions at Trim see T. O’Keeffe, ‘Angevin lordship and colonial Romanesque in
Ireland’, in M. Costen (ed),
People and Places: Essays in Honour of Michael Aston (Oxford,2007), 117‐29 at 124‐27.
67
Brooks, ‘Family of Marisco’, 57.68
See T.O’Keeffe, ‘Angevin lordship’, 127.69
Castles in Ireland, 38; Medieval Castles, 69.70
T.O’Keeffe, ‘Angevin lordship’, 127.71
McNeill, Castles in Ireland, 38; L. Dunne, ‘Adare castle: raising bridges and raisingquestions’, in Con Manning (ed),
From Ringforts to Fortified Houses: Studies on Castles andOther Monuments in Honour of David Sweetman
(Bray, 2007), 155‐70, at 155, 159‐60.Although a date of 1199 is given by authorities for his enfoeffment of Adare, he is first
mentioned in connection with the manor in 1226 (
Cal. docs Ire., 1171‐1251, no. 1415).72
Dunne, ‘Adare Castle’, 160.73
Sweetman describes the tower as a keep (Medieval Castles, 67), McNeill simply as a tower(
Castles in Ireland, 38‐40), and Dunne as ‘he great tower, comprising a four‐storey keep’(‘dare Castle’ 157).74
Although outside the scope of this paper, this attribution of the tower to Geoffrey, whichhas never been disputed, has obvious implications for the early hall. Similarities of detail
between the hall’s windows and those at the west end of the Cistercian abbey at
Monasteranenagh have persuaded scholars to date it to
c.1200 (H.G. Leask, Irish Castles andCastellated Houses
(Dundalk, 1973), 35; Salter, Castles of North Munster, 58; Dunne, ‘AdareCastle’, 159‐60; McNeill suggests a date ‘mmediately after 1200’(
Castles in Ireland, 38). IfGeoffrey was indeed the first Anglo‐Norman builder at Adare, the hall, which seems to be
the work of a different hand, conceivably pre‐dates his arrival and is therefore a rare
example of twelfth‐century Gaelic‐Irish seigneurial architecture.
75
Omitted from this enumeration is Newcastle (near Tyrrellspass), Co. Westmeath, whichhas the same proportions as the buildings listed and seems to be of the same general date
but, curiously, has one very shallow corner pilaster, and it projects in one direction only.
Newcastle is part of a small and heterogenous group of thirteenth‐century stone castles in
Westmeath which deserves attention. Such buttresses are not uncommon, of course, on
church buildings, especially the eatsern ends of monastic churches of the 1200.
76
For Greencastle see McNeill, Castles in Ireland, 88. The motte under the hall at Clough hasbeen dated numismatically to the early thirteenth century (T.E. McNeill, ’Clough Castle
reconsidered’, in C. Manning (ed),
From Ringforts to Fortified Houses: Studies on Castles andOther Monuments in Honour of David Sweetman
(Bray, 2007), 41‐51, at 49), so a date in the1220s for the hall and chamber tower seems reasonable.
77
The date of the Castlekirke (Caislen‐na‐Circe) is disputed. Patrick Holland suggested a post‐1237 date (‘he Anglo‐Norman Landscape in County Galway; Land‐Holdings, Castles and
Settlements’
JGAHS 49 (1997), 159‐93, at 164), and Mike Salter a date of c.1235 (The Castlesof Connacht
(Malvern, 2004), 28). McNeill identifies it, surely correctly, with the Irish‐builtcastle –one of two, both built with Anglo‐Norman support –‘estroyed’by Fedhlim Ua
Conchobhair in 1233 (
Castles in Ireland, 161); its construction should probably be attributedspecifically to Áed, son of Ruaidrí Ua Conchobhair, to whom Richard de Burgh restored the
kingship in 1232 (
AC 1232.4).78
An earth‐and‐timber castle was established before 1215; in that year it was delivered intothe custody of Geoffrey, and he surrendered it to the king in 1221 (
Cal. docs Ire., 1171‐1251,nos 600, 1015). The stone castle was certainly extant when it, with some other castles (also
of stone), were delivered to the justiciar by Richard de Burgh in 1233 (
Cal. docs Ire., 1171‐1251
, no. 2009).79
Indeed, outside of this small group, pilasters of any type are rare in Anglo‐Norman Ireland.The mid‐wall projections at Maynooth can be described as pilasters. There are at least three
other ‘ilastered’buildings are deserving of attention. One is the fragmentary castlebuilding,
more likely a small
donjon than a hall‐house (contra Sweetman, Medieval Castles,91), at Ballyboy, Co. Tipperary, where the corners pilasters, remarkably and puzzlingly, were
cylindrical, in the manner of twelfth‐century
donjons in France, including Henry II’s doubledonjonat Niort (see André Chatelian,
Donjons Romans des Pays d’Ouest, Paris, 1973, 178‐80). A second is in Templemore in the same county, with two small squared‐off end‐wall
pilasters and apparently a couple of similar mid‐wall pilasters. A
donjon rather than a towerhouseor a possible ‘late hall‐house’ the options offered by Sweetman (
Medieval Castles,104), detailed examination of the exterior of this building is hampered by vegetation. The
third is the western church tower at Baldongan, Co. Dublin, where there are small but bold
mid‐wall pilasters. Could this be a thirteenth‐century an ecclesiastical
donjon?80
It was known as the castle of Corcomoyth (or Corcomohide, the present parish name) in1322, the ‘old castle’ of Castletown in 1605, and Corkymohid‐Oughtragh in 1610 (T.
Westropp, ‘he ancient castles of the county of Limerick (western baronies)’
PRIA 26 (1906‐07), 201‐264, at 229).
81
In the only modern publications of it, the castle has been categorised not as a donjon butas a ‘hall‐house’(Sweetman,
Medieval Castles, 91; Salter, Castles of North Munster, 76) forno apparent reason other than being a thirteenth‐century focal building of rectangular plan;
indeed, the building is too ruined for the number of floors to be determined by physical
inspection, so the certainty with which it is described as a ‘all‐house’ by apparent
definition a two‐storeyed building, is puzzling. Mark Keegan’ subsequent reliance on this
identification, and his apparent acceptance of the view, articulated by Sweetman, that
thirteenth‐century ‘all‐houses’were of lower seigneurial status than ‘rue’castles,
dissuaded him from identifying the manor of Corcomohide as the
caput of its barony (‘Thearchaeology of manorial settlement in west county Limerick in the thirteenth century’, in
James Lyttleton & Tadhg O’Keeffe (eds),
The Manor on Medieval and Early Modern Ireland(Dublin, 2005), 17‐40, at 25). So, not only is the building in Castletown Conyers denied for
posterity its actual status as a major seigneurial castle, but the project of reconstructing the
political geography of medieval Limerick is hampered by an uncritical reading by
archaeologists of the archaeological record.
82
Westropp, ‘Ancient castles (north‐eastern baronies)’ 66.83
G. Martin. Plantation boroughs in medieval Ireland, with a handlist of boroughs to c.1500’,in D. Harkness & M O’Dowd (eds),
The Town in Ireland (Belfast, 1981), 23‐53, at 38.84
Cal. docs Ire., 1171‐1251, no. 92.85
John was William de Marisco’s brother. He is first mentioned in 1234 as John Fitz Geoffreyde Mariscis, when it is noted that he was in England with William Earl Warenne at the time
of the war between the king and Earl Marshall, and that the seizure of his possessions (along
with those of his father and brother) was thus unwarranted. Accordingly, the king
commanded his justiciar to return to John seisin of all his lands and castles (
Cal. docs Ire.,1171‐1251
, nos 2197, 2199). These lands and castles are not specified, which is unfortunatefor us but not problematic: by 1234 he was already married to Mabel, Hamo’s daughter, and
because by this time she had been given the
vill of Brouury as her marriage portion, thecantred of Brouury and the baronial castle at Corcomohide would have been among the
possessions restored to him. He was arrested again three years later, this time in connection
with the Clements murder, and his possessions were confiscated, but he was quickly
adjudged not guilty of being an accomplice in the felony of William de Marisco’ (
Cal. docsIre., 1171‐1251
, no. 2430) and released, though he seems not to have had his possessionsreturned to him this time: we learn in 1242 that in 1237, when John was imprisoned and
dispossessed, Mabel lost possession of her
vill of Brouury, and that she and her children hadto be accommodated and looked after by her grandfather, Richard de Burgh (
Cal. docs Ire.,1171‐1251
, no. 2584). John’s dispossession notwithstanding, members of the de Mariscofamily continued to reside in the cantred up to the 1290s at least, specifically (and
revealingly) in the manor of Corcomohide (
Red Book Kildare, no. 54; Cal Justiciary Rolls 1,164).
86
See for example Sweetman’s definition of a castle: ‘The expression “An Englishman’shome is his castle” may have some truth but what makes a true castle is its defences. Many
so‐called castles for instance in Scotland are merely ‘hâteaux’or grand houses of the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and are not true castles because they do not have
the defensive features of the medieval fortress. The castle is essentially feudal and is the
fortified residence of a lord in a society dominated by the military’(
Medieval Castles, 41).87
See Colin Platt’s recent attempt at a trend‐challenging defence of the militarist paradigmas applied to English castles (C. Platt, ‘evisionism in castle studies: a caution’
MedievalArchaeology
51 (2007), 83‐102) and the response by Oliver Creighton and Rob Liddiard (O.Creighton & R. Liddiard, ‘ighting yesterday's battle: beyond war or status in castle studies’
Medieval Archaeology
52 (2008), 161‐69).88
See for example Matthew Johnson, Behind the Castle Gate (London, 2002). For an Irishperspective see T. O'Keeffe, ‘Concepts of 'castle' and the construction of identity in medieval
and post‐medieval Ireland’
Irish Geography 34 (2001), 69‐88.89
Irish castle‐studies are not yet, however, at the point at which the military‐domesticdialectic is seriously challenged by the intrusion of new interpretations (structuralism
symbolism, the ritualised use architectural space, and so on). Terry Barry’ recent survey of
the field conveys accurately the value still being placed by a good number of writers,
especially in the Republic of Ireland, in the traditional interpretation of the castle as
primarily a fortress, the defensibility of which decreased in proportion to domestic
arrangements as as gunpowder the medieval centuries edged towards the modern period
and as gunpowder came into use (‘he study of medieval Irish castles: a bibliographic
survey’
PRIA 108C (2008), 115‐36).90
For the etymology of donjon see Robert Higham & Philip Barker, Timber Castles (London,1992), 361. The ceremonial functions of
donjons are usefully outlined in P. Marshall, ‘Thegreat tower as residence’, in G. Meirion‐Jones, E. Impey & M. Jones (eds),
The SeigneurialResidence in Western Europe, AD
c 800‐1600 (Oxford, 2002), 27‐44;. For exemplification of adonjon
’s performative roles, see P. Dixon, ‘The donjon at Knaresborough: the castle astheatre’,
Château Gaillard 16 (1990), 121‐39.91
See Michael Parker Pearson & Colin Richards (eds), Architecture and Order: Approaches toSocial Space
(Routledge, 1994), esp. 1‐34, 35‐67. For a structuralist reading of Irisharchitectural (and urban‐topographical) space see T. O’eeffe, ‘ownscape as text: the
topography of social interaction in Fethard, county Tipperary, AD 1300‐1700’
IrishGeography
32 (1999), 9‐25.