Page:Archaeologia volume 38 part 1.djvu/187

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Ancient Domestic Architecture of Ireland.
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similar to the first, but later; it has a bartizan and a battlement in corbie-steps, the usual Irish battlement down to the sixteenth century, but not so early as the twelfth, when there was generally a plain solid parapet. Within it has a barrel-vault, and the putlog holes for a floor; the staircase is carried up obliquely in the thickness of the wall, but leads up above the vault into an octagonal turret; there are a fireplace and a garderobe to the dwelling-chamber.

Bullock Castle is a house of the twelfth century fortified in the usual manner. The plan is a simple oblong divided by a cross wall into two unequal portions, the lower story vaulted throughout. Above, in the larger division, are two principal rooms, one over the other; the windows small, round-headed, and widely splayed; some of the doorways are round-headed, others pointed; there is a fireplace in each of these rooms, and a garderobe in a turret at one corner, a small closet in another, with the staircase between. The smaller division of the house is divided into three stories above the vault, probably for bed-rooms, without fireplaces; the windows are square-headed, but splayed like the others. The ground-floor rooms under the vault were probably store-rooms; an archway passes through under one part of the house, as if for a communication from one courtyard to the other. At the top the two ends of the building are higher than the centre, forming a sort of towers, but all part of one design and built together, and there are battlements of the usual Irish form in steps. This plan of having the two ends higher than the centre is common in the Irish towers. The work is all plain and rude. There are remains of the outer wall inclosing a large bawn or bailey (ballium), and one of the corner towers remains. It is difficult to judge of the age of this sort of plain rude rough work: in England it would be twelfth-century without a doubt, but in Ireland it may be often much later: there are, however, generally, some indications of later work; and, where the windows and doors are round-headed, and there is little cut stone, it is probably of the twelfth century.

Loughmore Castle, co. Tipperary, consists of two parts. The greater portion is an Elizabethan mansion of the Purcells, but this has been added to an early keep of the beginning of the thirteenth century. The plan is oblong; the ground-floor is vaulted with a plain brick vault, and there is another vault near the top of the tower under the chief apartment, with wooden floors under it; there were altogether five stories; the windows are round-headed, but the doorways are pointed. The principal chamber at the top was a fine room, 36 feet 6 inches by 28 feet 6 inches internal measure, and lofty in proportion. The corbels of the timber roof and the weather moulding remain: over the roof there was a parapet