Westropp — Lesser Castles or Peel Toicers of Clare. 349 



architectural subject, and requires deeper and wider research and 

 knowledge of the records, laws, and tribal customs than the author of 

 this paper can claim. 



The castles in the districts once held by the Macnamaras in the 

 baronies of Bunratty and Tulla are no less than eighty in number. 

 Such instructive records of their origin remain that, by combining these 

 with the study of the structure and ornament of the towers to which 

 they refer, we may use the facts for the purpose of dating similar 

 features, not only in the other " castles," but also in the monasteries 

 and churches of the locality in which similar details occur. 



Antiquaries in Scotland consider that the building of " peel towers " 

 in that country commenced in the unsettled times of Eobert Bruce, 

 but in Ireland, at any rate in the western counties, the date of such 

 strongholds is usually in the following century. The Irish towers 

 were very probably imitated from the English, and succeeded the 

 earlier raths and eahers which had continued in use till the fourteenth 

 century and often later. 



The Earliest Castles, 



There were several early castles in the county Clare. One of the 

 earliest seems to have been a wooden castle ''near theBorowe " (that 

 is to say the great earthen fort of Boromha), close to Killaloe ; it was 

 made by the English in 1207.^ License was given to Robert da 

 Musegros, in January 1248, to build castles in Tradree^ (Lower Bun- 

 ratty) ; of these we find possible remains at Clare Castle, and perhaps 

 in the unrecorded and nearly unknown fortress of Knockanoura, near 

 Ennis. Quin, whose massive corner turrets, gate and curtain walls 

 are embedded in the Franciscan Eriary, was built by Sir Thomas De 

 Clare during an interval of peace in 1279.^ The masons were at 

 work there in 1280, when one of them assassinated Prince Donall 

 O'Brien. This formidable fortress, "round-towered, stone- substantial" 

 Cuvea Macnamara "attacked. Its ditch was crjssed, earthworks 

 carried, great gate battered in and hewn down; its strong walls were 

 breached . . . and in the actual castle a huge pile oi stuff was given to 

 the flames that ran riot till the whole became a black vaulted hideous 

 cavern." This took place about 1285 or 1286, in revenge for 



^ Annals of Clonmacnoise. The history of the De Clares is given in the 

 Journal R. S. A. I., 1890-91, " The Normans in Thomond." 



^ " Calendar of Irish State Papers," 1248, p. 465. 



^ "Annals of Inisfallen," and "Wars of Turlough," p. 30 ; the latter by the 

 kindness of Mr. Standish Hayes O'Grady. 



