Fortified Buildings

The early inhabitants of Ireland do not appear to have been a warlike people. They were peaceable farmers living quietly in different family groups or tribes, occupying their own land. The Irish legends tell of feuds, disputes and great battles yet the need for defensive architecture seems to have been little felt in pre-historic and early Christian times. The traditional form of defensive enclosure is the ring fort, rath or cashel that endures in the Irish countryside well into the middle ages.

When the Norsemen arrived in the ninth century to pillage on the Irish coast and river estuaries defence became an issue. Remarkably the response of irish religious communities was first to build a place of secure retreat. This produced an architectural form unique to Ireland - the Round Tower - which is a monument to prudent pacifism.

The Normans follow the Norsemen, arriving in 1169 and rapidly established their power in Leinster, Meath and Ulster. Their first castles are circular mottes of earth, thrown up all over the country to provide a secure camp for an invading garrison. Stone castles follow. They were built as massive keeps whose thick walls, considerable height and complex defensive systems were intended not only to bring the benefits of advanced defensive technology to the protection of their builders but also to overawe the indigenous population. In this period the major cities were defended with battlemented walls and fortified gates. Athenry in Co. Galway is Ireland's finest walled town and there are impressive medieval remains at Waterford and Drogheda. The discovery of gunpowder towards the end of the fifteenth century lead to a totally different concept of attack and defence and to the development of artillery fortification.

Artillery Fortification

Oliver Cromwell

Cromwell only spent 9 months in Ireland from August 1649 to May 1650, but his impact was to be everlasting on the island. With fierce brutality Cromwell succeed in completing the English conquest of Ireland where others had failed. Cromwell first set a course to Drogheda. 3,500 men women and children were killed over the two day battle, with the city suffering heavy bombardment. Nearby towns surrendered or evacuated. Less than a month later, Cromwell arrived at Wexford town. Here over 1500 people were slaughtered in the massacre that ensued. Cromwell rested in Youghal until the spring of 1650 and then turned his attention towards Kilkenny and the Tipperary towns of Fethard, Clonmel and Cashel. By May 1650 Ireland had been placed under British rule and Cromwell returned home. Sieges on both Limerick and Galway, the last city under Irish control to fall, ended in October and November 1650 respectively. English rule in Ireland was complete.

Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell

Cromwell only spent 9 months in Ireland from August 1649 to May 1650, but his impact was to be everlasting on the island. With fierce brutality Cromwell succeed in completing the English conquest of Ireland where others had failed. Cromwell first set a course to Drogheda. 3,500 men women and children were killed over the two day battle, with the city suffering heavy bombardment. Nearby towns surrendered or evacuated. Less than a month later, Cromwell arrived at Wexford town. Here over 1500 people were slaughtered in the massacre that ensued. Cromwell rested in Youghal until the spring of 1650 and then turned his attention towards Kilkenny and the Tipperary towns of Fethard, Clonmel and Cashel. By May 1650 Ireland had been placed under British rule and Cromwell returned home. Sieges on both Limerick and Galway, the last city under Irish control to fall, ended in October and November 1650 respectively. English rule in Ireland was complete.

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The rapid progress of Cromwell and his deputy, Captain Henry Ireton, through Ireland in 1650 demonstrated the vulnerability of high walls when both Drogheda and Waterford were quickly breached by the English parliamentary guns. Defensive buildings were now set out with walls of great thickness, frequently back filled with earth to resist the force of cannon fire. Bastions, which are raised terraces projecting forward from a wall at each angle or change of direction, became the essential element of artillery fortification. To insure that the face of the wall could always be protected by fire from one bastion or another the plan was refined into a salient or pointed form. A group of salient bastions protecting a place created the polygonal and star-shaped artillery forts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Systems of bastions and fortified gateways became the common defense for cities throughout Europe. In Ireland they tended to be used to defend independent, separate barracks: Elizabeth Fort in Cork, Hillsborough Fort in Co. Down, Charles Fort at Kinsale and Beggar's Bush barracks in Dublin are good examples.

The Martello Towers built between 1801 and 1810 are the last development in the forms of fortification found in Ireland, They are small circular forts, faced in stone and lined in brick with gun platforms on their roofs. Erected by the British government, after the Rising of 1798, they were intended to secure the coasts of Ireland against a possible French invasion and were placed strategically to prevent an enemy fleet from making use of any of Ireland's natural harbours.