Tower house
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A tower house is a particular type of stone structure, built for defensive purposes as well as habitation.[1] Such buildings were constructed in the wilder parts of Great Britain, particularly in Scotland, and throughout Ireland, beginning in the High Middle Ages and continuing at least up to the 17th century. The remains of such structures are dotted around the Irish and Scottish countryside. Some are still intact and even inhabited today, while others stand as mere shells in a field or on a hillside.
Tower houses are often called castles, and despite their characteristic compact footprint size, they are formidable habitations and there is no clear distinction between a castle and a tower house. Moreover, some structures are characterized as tower houses which are in the L Plan Castle style, such as the original layout (prior to enlargement) of Muchalls Castle in Scotland.[2][3]
The few surviving round Scottish Iron Age towers known as Brochs and the remains of numerous duns indicate that the idea of tower houses goes back at least two thousand years.
In Ireland, there are over 1,000 tower houses extant. These were built with a grant from the then ruling English monarch, Ireland being under English control at the time. Many of these structures were positioned within sight of each other and a system of visual communication is said to have been established between them, based on line of sight from the uppermost levels. County Kilkenny has several examples of this arrangement.
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[edit] World wide perspective
While tower houses are appropriately attributed to the British Isles as their main occurrence, examples from elsewhere in Europe and the New World exist. Most notably may be a focal element of the Mesa Verde Anasazi ruin in Colorado, USA.[4] There is a prominent structure at that site which is in fact called the "tower house" and has the general appearance characteristics of its British Isles counterparts. This four story building was constructed of adobe bricks circa 1350 AD, and its rather well preserved ruins are nestled within a cliff overhang; moreover, other accounts date this ruin somewhat earlier.
After initial European tower houses appearing in Ireland, Scotland and England during the High Middle Ages, Toy traces the appearance in other parts of western Europe as early as the late 14th century, especially in parts of France and Italy.
[edit] References
- ^ Sidney Toy, Castles: Their Construction and History, (1985), Courier Dover Publications, ISBN 0486248984
- ^ MacIntosh, J. Gordon, Country Life Magazine, Dec. 18, 1937, pp 630-634
- ^ C.Michael Hogan, Sigvard Richardson and Peter Graves, History of Muchalls Castle, Kincardineshire, Scotland, Lumina Press, Aberdeen (2004)
- ^ Tower house structure at Mesa Verde
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