Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/250

234 ARCHITECTURE OF IRELAND. Part II. seen the towers must feel that there is still room for any amount of speculation regarding such peculiar monuments. In nine cases out of ten they are placed unsymmetrically at some little distance from the churches to which they belong, and are aen- erally of a different age and different style of masonry. Their openings, from the oldest to the most modern, generally have sloping jambs, which are very rare in the churches, being only found in the earliest examples. Their doorways are always at a height of 7, 10, or 13 ft. from the ground, while the church doors are, it need hardly be said, always on the ground level. But more than all this, there is an unfamiliar ECTION PLAN 66S. Round Tower and Chancel Arch of Fineans Chapel, 6G9. Doorway iu Tower, Kildare. Cloumacnoise. aspect about every detail of the towers which is never observed in the churches. The latter may be rude, or may be highly finished, but they never have the strange and foreign appearance which the towers always present. Notwithstanding this, the proof of their Christian origin is in most cases easy. Woodcut No. 666, for instance, shows a round tower placed ^qwn what is, undoubtedly, a Christian chapel, and which must consequently be either coeval with the tower or more ancient. At Clonmacnoise (Woodcut No. 668) the masonry of the tower is bonded with the walls of the church, and evidently coeval