The tower of Grangefertagh is my grandfather’s ancestral home. Cousins still living in house adjacent to tower. That tower is unbelievable btw; it looms over the house & fields
Great Video but one part you got wrong was the tallest tower in Eire is Kilmacduagh’s round tower Co Galway, 34 metre's but if you lok at your video again it looks like tere is stuff in the fied t be dug out pause at 2:19 ???
Great footage, not convinced they are all christian though. If they were there would be good reasons for the doors being metres up from the surface. Can't see monks in their cassocks shimmying up a rope to ring a bell. Why not a staircase? Also, not one sign of religious ornamentation so I think possibly pre-christian or for non religious use, other buildings added later maybe.
They are undoubtedly Christian. They had external wooden frame staircases and are only found outside of churches. They post-date the arrival of Christianity in Ireland.
@@OssoryOverSeas no written evidence they were built by monastics at all. nothing in the annals. comments about raids alright but one would think it would be worth jotting into the log that a 30 meter structure (tallest in the land) with a meter thick wall was built! certainly was no small task. nowhere else in Europe bar our immediate neighbour. I would definitely place them pre Christian but as you can detect from the info in the video - archaeology Ireland are not quite ready to carbon date that horse hair in the morter just yet... and shame on them! they won't touch the two hot potatoes - Ring forts or round towers.
Ireland was the hub of monastic learning in the early Christian period. Vikings regularly attacked the settlements, so the round towers were used to store food and other valuable goods. The doors were located high up so when an attack happened the monks could shelter in the round tower and pull up the wooden ladders they had for access, so therefore they were safe from the Viking attackers.
