40 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



The Castle mote is a beautifully shaped, couical mound,' giving in its 

 external surface no clear evidence of having been raised at various periods. 

 Its height is 35 feet to the north, 38 feet to the east and west, and 33 feet to 

 the south-east. It is about 69 feet across on the level summit and 

 411 feet round its base, its slope rising exactly 1 in 1. The fosse is 

 12 feet wide in the bottom ; going round from the apparent gangway and gate 

 to the south-east, we find it deepened from 70 feet westward, further 

 deepened at loO feet on the south-west side to 234 feet on the west, rising up 

 towards the east. It is a fine and well-shaped fosse 12 feet below the berm. 

 or terrace, 9 feet to 10 feet wide ; outside this was a breastwork, now about 

 4 feet high, whence the outer slope, some of it the untouched hillock, falls in 

 a steep slope to the plateau. 



The Keep- has a massive wall 10 feet 2 inches thick and about 30 feet to 

 40 feet high, of strong grouted rubble, with neat outer facing, circular inside, 

 and polygonal outside, with shallow faces. It has stepped battlements, with 

 arrow-slits, and the late Mrs. Morgan, of Old Abbey, remembered a small 

 turret' on the summit, to the west, long since fallen. The tower has no 

 vaulting, or ledges, or corbels for floors ; the south-west segment is standing ; 

 some of the rock-like masses of the rest lie on the platform or rolled down the 

 mote. One to the north-east has part of a window ; part of a second window 

 is in the tower to the north-west. The heads were turned over small planks, 

 not over wicker centres. There is no ramp up to it, nor any sign of a gate. 

 The barbican wall ran round the edge, in part actually touches the keep ; the 

 lower part had formerly an exaggerated batter to hold it back from the slope ; 

 but this is all quarried out ; above the batter it was 4 feet thick ; it is 

 10 feet at the base, and has an extremely narrow summit and thin-stepped 

 battlements, with slits like those of the keep. There were probably wooden 

 platforms inside, as otherwise soldiers could scarcely have moved on the top 

 with safety. The wall is 9 feet 6 inches high to the platform ; much of it now 

 leans outward to an alarming degree, and is badly cracked ; soon all must fall 

 down the mote, as so much has done in the past. Where the outer ring is 



1 Plate III, fig. 1. Plan and sections, Plate IV. 



^ I hope some specialist will face the age oi^ the ring-tower. Tlie indications favour 

 its early origin when contrasted with the Castles of Askeaton, Adare, and Newcastle. 



^ This appears in a little sketch on the Hardiman map. No. 56 Trinity College Library, 

 exTca 1590. I have seen a sketch of the feature, probably late eighteenth century, but 

 cannot recall its owner. The exaggerated view in Hall's " Ireland, its Scenery and 

 Character, " vol. i.p. 37-1, does not show it {circa 1840, "Green Sc.'") ; nor is it mentioned 

 even in Fitz Gerald's and MacGregor's "History of Limerick." The best printed 

 description is in that work, vol. i, pp. 363-4. 



