I bet you didn't know that this thread would have a part 2

KevRossi wrote: »

Incredible place all the same, really worth a visit as is all the area to the Med to the north of it. And to think they built that when we were living in straw roofed stone huts, with the odd round tower as the height of our building technology.

That was an interesting thing about Irish architecture, that even though the culture in the early medieval was a repository for all sorts of Classical knowledege including architecture, they continued to build in an almost stone age way. About the only difference was the knowledge of mortar meant they could build bigger and higher. The conical roof of a round tower is the same corbel structure as Newgrange. The beehive huts of the Skelligs could be stone age too. They were absolute masters of the drywall building technique. They did build arches, but even here sometimes they would put in a lintel, old tech and carve the new tech arch into it.

The last round tower built was at Ardmore. Constructed in the 12th century and unusual for the three decorative courses.



There is no mystery as to their purpose. They were bell towers and that's what they called them in the annals(though some translations may mean stone house). They were not defensive and would have been useless in that capacity anyway. Build a fire around their base and you could cook the monks inside to death(and likely bring it down). They had unbelieveably shallow foundations for their height. IIRC the deepest only goes down a couple of feet in old money and not much more than a foot in the shallowest example. They survived in large enough numbers because their shape was pretty wind resistant like a lighthouse(imagine the storms that Ardmore one lived through) and the base part below the raised door was filled with rubble which anchored them(though one exists with a door in the base and still stands). The annals do report they were often hit by lightning, which usually blew off the pointed roof. The only one left with its original roof cap is in Clondalkin, Dublin(I was actually inside that one many moons ago). All the rest were reconstructed, or some were repurposed as lookouts with flat crenellated tops.

Painting of Glendalough from the 18th century, minus the pointy top.



The last one at Ardmore does lean a bit, well so would you after eight centuries. . Meanwhile in Italy at the same time Ardmore tower was just finished and another bell tower that leans...



Yep that's what the Italians were at... Dead fanceh. OK it was started in the 12th century but took two centuries to build. Not because they were lazy, but wars and and recessions got in the way. As they will. It had started to lean quite early on. Actually the long time between construction phases may have saved it by allowing the ground to settle under the initial weight. It's not the only leaning building in that neck of the woods either. The church beside it is also sinking on one side. The same church was later the place where on Galileo was baptised. And the same church that as a young man he watched a chandelier swing back and forth and noticed that no matter the distance of the swing the time it took was always the same and one story goes he went up the leaning tower to drop two unequal weight cannonballs and noticed they always hit the ground at the same time. But I digress. He's another post entirely. And all this leaning and swinging? The name of the town Pisa may have been a reference to swampy land... As another interesting coincidence, the same crappy underpinnings likely saved the tower and all the older buildings from the earthquakes the area has suffered. The soft soil acts as a damper so the resonating frequencies aren't strong enough to bring the buildings down. Oh and after efforts to save the tower a few years back it actually leans half as much as it did a century ago.

IIRC they were handbells rather than the big bells most associeated with later bells in churches and a couple of those do survive. The handbell of St Patrick the most well known.



With its reliquary/shrine.