ABSTRACT
It seems to have been Parker in 1860 who first used the term ‘tower-house’ to describe the small castles of Ireland. At the time, he made a number of shrewd observations about them; their outward similarity but actual variability, that the principal rooms were on the upper floors, and he compared some of their architectural details with those of medieval churches. To Parker, the difference between the tower-houses and the larger castles, such as Maynooth or Trim, was simply one of resources or class; the tower-houses were for the gentry, the large castles for the magnates. Westropp (1900) stated the case for the late medieval date of the tower-houses of Clare, in contrast to the earlier large castles such as Quin, which he considered to be mainly of thirteenth-century date. He based this partly on a list of founding of the castles, unacknowleged in his article, but identified by Donnelly (1994, 18) as later published in O’Grady (1926) and partly on the identification of the Irish towers with those of the Anglo-Scottish Border, an identification which he reinforced by calling them ‘peel towers’. He also listed the main internal features, such as loops, vaults, etc., and, without making it explicit, showed that these related to churches which were to be ascribed to the fifteenth century in a broad sense.
