Heritage archives - Kinneigh Round Tower

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Introduction

The typical round tower is a free standing cylindrically shaped building, usually in close proximity to a church and located most likely to its NW or SW side. Distribution fairly evenly covers most of Ireland and even some off shore islands, but two areas, south Munster and the north midlands, have relatively few. County Cork has only 2 extant examples but possibly had up to 6 in the past. In total there are c.64 surviving in Ireland. Round Tower windows always ascend clockwise, right to left, and very often four windows mark the upper storey. The latest treatise on Round Towers, Ireland’s Round Towers, 2004, by Tadhg O’Keeffe, classifies them using doorways and says doorways give the best indication of tower chronology, though dating them is difficult. In historical sources their destruction was more often recorded than their construction. The first historical reference to a Round Tower, Slane, Co. Meath, was in 950AD.