Round tower

The National Monuments Service's description

In the village of Aghagower, located in the centre of a graveyard (MA088-063002-), 3m to SW of a medieval church (MA088-063001-).
This round tower is a National Monument in state ownership (no. 96). It is one of the few visible remains of an early medieval monastery, which traced its roots back to a church said to have been consecrated at Aghagower in the 5th century by St. Patrick. The success of the monastery can at least partly be attributed to its location mid-way along the Togher Patrick (MA088-062----), an important medieval pilgrimage route to Croagh Patrick (MA087-044001-). The round tower, which was probably built in the late 11th or 12th century, is an expression of the monastery’s prestige and importance, and would have been one of the most impressive landmarks encountered by pilgrims as they walked the route (Corlett 2014, 52)
The remains consists of a circular tower (diam. c. 5m; current H c. 16m) of coursed, roughly dressed mortared stones; it no longer stands to its full height and is missing its conical corbelled roof. The original doorway (Wth 0.7m; H 1.52m), which has a plain round arch formed by three stones, is at E at first floor level, 2.18m above exterior ground level; the stones are spalled and shattered, possibly as a result of fire. A flat-headed doorway (Wth 0.76m; H 1.6m) at ground floor level on the NW side is a late insert. Five rings of stone corbels protrude at evenly spaced intervals from the internal wall face; these supported wooden floors, and indicate that there were at least five storeys above the ground floor. Three small square-headed windows can be seen at different floor levels, at SSW (now blocked), at WSW and at S. A change in the masonry towards the top of the tower on the N side marks the location of a large breach which was repaired in 1969 by the OPW. The tower leans slightly to the N. (Barrow 1979, 154-5).
The OS Letters record that in 1838 the round tower was ‘much destroyed, as tradition says by lightening, which blew off the top of it to Teevnish, a distance of about half a mile! where it was to be seen firmly stuck together until a few years ago when the stones were taken away and burned into lime’ (O’Flanagan 1927, 455-6 (224)). 

The small conical capstone, which once formed the apex of the roof, is now to be found set in concrete on a mortared stone pedestal on the N side of the modern Roman Catholic church to S of the round tower. Fashioned from a single block of stone (H 0.4m; diam. of base c 0.43-0.45m; diam. top 0.13m), it has a roughly oval mortise hole (5.5cm by 4 cm; D 7cm) at top which probably originally held a stone or timber cross.

Compiled by: Jane O'Shaughnessy

Date of upload: 11 December 2020

References

Corlett, C. 2014 The early church in Umhall, west Mayo. In C. Corlett & M. Potterton (eds) The Church in Early Medieval Ireland in the light of recent archaeological excavations,39-92. Wordwell. O'Flanagan, Rev. M. (Compiler) 1927 Letters containing information relative to the antiquities of the county of Mayo collected during the progress of the Ordnance Survey in 1838. Bray. Barrow, G.L. 1979 The round towers of Ireland: a study and gazetteer. Dublin. The Academy Press. Gwynn, A. and Hadcock, R.N. 1970 (Reprint 1988) Medieval religious houses of Ireland. Dublin. Irish Academic Press.