[ 348 ] 



XIX. 



I^OTES ON THE LESSER CASTLES OE "PEEL TOWEES" OF 

 THE COUNTY CLAEE. By T. J. WESTEOPP, M.A. 



(Plates XYI. and XVII.) 



[Read April 24, 1899.] 



Tkayellees in Ireland are often impressed by the great number of 

 "peel towers,"^ grandiloquently called "castles," which abound in 

 many districts of this island. This is especially the case on the line 

 of railway from Limerick to Athenry, along -which nearly thirty of 

 these buildings are visible, several so close to the line as to be very 

 ■well seen in all their principal features. 



Despite the interest of the structures as a class, and their similarity 

 to the peel towers of Scotland and northern England,^ few detailed 

 accounts are accessible to students in the journals of the various 

 antiquarian societies, or the county histories. Tet, when we con- 

 sider their many points of architectural interest, and that they probably 

 owe their origin to the great alterations in society and land tenure 

 (which evidently changed the tribal lands to practically personal 

 properties during the fifteenth century), we may well be astonished 

 at the paucity of students in this important field of Irish archaeology. 



This paper does not aim at more than a general account of the 

 " castles " of a single district. It treats mainly of the towers built 

 in such numbers especially by the Dalcassian tribes of county Clare, 

 mostly (as shall be seen) during the period from 1430 to 1480. This 

 synchronises with the great change above alluded to, which is strikingly 

 marked by the difference between the two valuable "rentals" of the 

 Macnamaras and O'Briens, about 1380 or 1390,^ and the Inquisition 

 taken at Galway on the death of John Macnamara Finn in 1585. 

 This change is far too important to be discussed in a brief paper on an 



^ The name "peel" to^ver is not in use in Ireland. I merely employ it here to 

 equate these little turrets with those of Great Britain. Pill or Pele is a Welch 

 and Manx term for a tower. 



2 '' Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland fi'om the twelfth to the 

 eighteenth century," hy D. Mac Gibbon and T. Ross, p. 143. " Pele Towers of 

 Northumberland," by Charles Clement Hodges. Reliquary, Jan. 1891, p. 1. 



^ Transactions R.I. A., vol. xv., p. 45. 



