ABSTRACT
There can be little doubt that the establishment of the new English lordships in Ireland saw a massive building programme of castles. Clearly the two things were connected, but exactly how is less obvious. It has often been assumed that castle building was part of the actual winning of the land, which is seen as a single act of military aggression (‘conquest’), and the castles as inherently military in conception. One of the difficulties of writing about this period has been to avoid the two words ‘conquest’ and ‘colonisation’. These are words loaded with nine-teenth-century overtones, especially in the context of Ireland, which beg questions about the nature of the English lordship and the reaction of Irish kings and people to it.
