Bawn

The National Monuments Service's description

Associated with a tower house (GA084-005001-). On the 1838 edition of the OS 6-inch map, the tower house is shown within the SE angle of a large roughly subrectangular, internally divided, area (c. 100m NNW-SSE; c. 55m ENE-WSW) depicted by a pecked line. The internal division is shown roughly midway across the enclosed area, which Cody (1989, 352-3) suggests marks the outline of the bawn. Only a short stretch of the SE side of the bawn wall (L 5.95m) now survives; it extends roughly off the mid-point of the SW wall of the tower house and both now stand in the W half of a later enclosure (GA084-050002-) (ibid.). A masonry joint is visible in the wall-face 3.7m from the tower house. To the E of the joint the wall is wider (Wth 2.5m) than the section to its W (Wth 1.7m), which is less well built and may be of later date. The section to the E survives to a height of three storeys and accommodates a barrel-vaulted semicircular arched gateway (Wth 1.8m) at ground level with an overhead room on the 1st and 2nd floors. A hanging eye was visible on the W side of the arch in November 1983 (SMR file) but it has since been broken; a similar broken projecting stone visible on the opposite side of the arch suggests that there was formerly another hanging eye on this side. A murder-hole in the vault is now blocked; it was accessed from the 1st-floor room. This room and the one above it on the 2nd floor are contained within the thickness of the wall. Though now inaccessible, they would originally have been entered from the doorways visible in the SW wall of the tower house. The room on the 1st floor was lit by a circular ope in the S wall-face, while that on the 2nd floor was lit by a rectangular loop. Also on this floor a chimney rises and feeds into the main chimney on the SW wall of the tower house (ibid. 354-5). Outside the enclosure the perimeter of this wall, which runs a further 10m to the southwest, the SW (L 50m) and NW (L 35) walls can be traced as a low grassy bank (Wth 2m; max. H 0.7m) in which the lower levels of a masonry wall are visible. (Cody 1989, 352-3). No trace of the NE side was noted. A modern roadway cuts through the NE quadrant of the interior.

Compiled by: Olive Alcock

Date of upload: 7 September 2021

References

Cody, E. 1989 An archaeological survey of the barony of Athenry, Co. Galway. Unpublished MA thesis, University College Galway.

SMR file - Sites and monuments record files in the National Monuments Service, Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.