Uses of the Round Towers of Ireland, fyc. 



403 



adjacent mountains, and in this circumstance it resembles the doorways of 

 several of the churches in the valley. It measures five feet seven inches and a 

 half in height, one foot ten inches in width below the arch stone, and two feet 

 at the sill. The thickness of the wall is four feet. 



In many of the most ancient semicircular-headed doorways we find the head 

 constructed on the regular principle of the arch, as in the illustration of the 

 doorway of the Tower of Oughterard, in the County of Kildare, given on the 

 last page, in which the arch is formed of three stones; or, as in the doorway of 

 the Tower on Tory Island, off the north coast of the County of Donegal, in which 

 the arch is formed of a number of small stones, as shewn in the next illustration. 



The Tower of Oughterard was connected with a church of nuns, founded 

 in the sixth or seventh century by a Saint Bridget, a different person from 

 the more celebrated saint of that name, of Kildare : and the Tower on Tory 

 Island was connected with a monastery founded there in the sixth century by 

 St. Columbkille. 



I should have remarked that the quadrangular doorways of the Towers 



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