Kildare – Bogwarrior.com

Oughterard – Pint Sized

The original monastery at Oughterard is said to have been founded by St. Briga (aka. St Brigid). Confusingly, this isn’t the same St. Brigid who is connected with the settlement in nearby Kildare or one of the many other Brigids out there. Honestly, your head would start to spin if you try to figure all of it out. Less confusingly (and more of that in a moment), it is also the final resting place of Arthur Guinness, who founded that brewery.

Little remains of the original monastery now, apart from the round tower. It stands at the back of a cemetery which is found at the top of a hill. Indeed, the Irish name for Oughterard is Uachtar Ard or high upper place. Like many other monasteries, it was raided by the Vikings. In the case of Oughterard, it was raided by the wonderfully named Sigtrygg Silkbeard who was a well-known Dublin-based Viking. At one point, the area was owned by Dermot MacMurrough, who’s possibly buried near another round tower…

Now partially ruined, the tower here is built from shale rubble. Its doorcase is round-headed and made from granite. There is a padlocked metal door now in the doorway, ensuring that nobody’s getting in.

Close to the tower is a ruined church which dates from the 14th century. Its most striking feature, apart from the window which faces the cemetery gate, is the stairs turret which looks like it’s ready to topple over Looking at other photos online, it is still possible to climb it but it wasn’t for me!

Inside the wall of the church is a plaque which begins “In the adjoining vault are deposited the mortal remains of Arthur Guinness…..” Guinness was born locally in either 1724 or 1725 – the date and place of his birth are disputed. Tradition has it that his grandfather and his father brewed ale, so it was inevitable that he’d end up continuing that line of business. After initially leasing a brewery in Leixlip, he signed a 9,000 year lease at a site in St. James’s Gate, Dublin. This is where the Guinness brewery and adjoining tourist trap continue to operate to this day.

Getting There

These days, the cemetery is marketed as part of “Arthur’s Way”, a Guinness related tourist trail run by Kildare County Council. The entrance is near a bend in a country road but there is room to park along there. It is a well-maintained site and even though there isn’t a lot here, it’s quite a pleasant place to spend a while. There are some nice views too.

Taghadoe

I went to university in Maynooth in the early 1990s and spent my time there blissfully unaware that a 2o minute bike ride out of town would’ve taken me to a round tower. Anyway, I took the opportunity to finally take a look at the round tower in Taghadoe after all these years. What’s 30 years in the lifespan of a round tower anyway?

Sorry about the overcooked looking photo – this is exactly what came out of my phone. Visiting at 8:30pm on a summer’s evening isn’t the best time for tower snaps

Very little is known about the monastic site which once stood here. Taghadoe is attributed to St. Tua (also known as St. Ultan the Silent). The only other thing known about the monastery is that one of its abbots (Folachtach of Tech-Tua, died 770AD) had previously been abbot of Clonmacnoise.

All that remains of the monastery is the tower. It stands in a small, well-kept graveyard beside a ruined 19th century church. It is built from limestone and stands 19.9 metres high. Above the round-headed doorway is what appears to be a heavily worn head. There is a similar feature in Monasterboice, some 80km away. At one point, the tower was used as a coal store of all things and doorway was cut into the wall. It was closed up in the 19th century and my untrained eye couldn’t say for sure where the doorway once was.

Taghadoe Round tower — How dairy come along and take photos of our tower

And there you have it…. There isn’t a lot to see here other than the tower. The church beside it was built in 1821 and abandoned 40 or so years later. The site surrounded by a dairy farm and fields of cattle – as a result, my visit was soundtracked to the sound of vigorous mooing and the scent of cow dung 🙂

Getting There

The tower is easy to find – it is on the side of a country road, 5km south of Maynooth. There isn’t a lot of parking around here, so be mindful of where you leave your car and don’t block any gateways.

Old Kilcullen – a dwarfed dwarf?

The monastery at Old Kilcullen is said to have been founded by St. Patrick and left in the care of Mac Táil (Son of the Adze) who he ordained. It is built on top of a hill 2km outside the town of Kilcullen and overlooks some nice rolling countryside. It is also 500m south-east of the Dún Áilinne hill fort which was a significant neolithic site. Perhaps something is to be read into an early Christian site being founded so near a pagan one?

Kilcullen

If you have been reading any of these round tower posts, it will come as little surprise to learn that the monastery was raided by Vikings in the 10th century. It was burned again in 1114.

kilcullen_outside_wall

Little remains of the monastery, apart from the tower, the ruins of a 12th-century church and the remnants of 2 high crosses. The tower now stands just 11m high but was taller until 1798. Just like the round tower at Roscrea, it was damaged during the 1798 rebellion. It lost some of its height but not to the extent that the Roscrea tower did. It is believed that this one wasn’t all that tall to begin with. Old drawings and records suggest the tower had no cap but had 4 windows on what would have been its bell floor. This is unusual in the world of round towers but not unique. The towers at Dromiskin, Co. Louth and on Tory Island off the Co. Donegal coast are not that tall either.

Old Kilcullen Round Tower 2021 (23)

The doorway into the tower is quite low too (the door sill is just 1.8 m from the ground) but this is because the ground around it has risen over the centuries. Until the 1990s, it was possible to access the tower but there is now a metal grille in the doorway. Still, it is nice to take a closer look at a doorway that is almost at eye level.

Kilcullen doorway 2021

Apart from the tower and the partial high crosses, there isn’t a lot to see here. I’d rate this as one for round tower completists. If you want to see one round tower in Kildare, go for the one in Kildare town. Not only is it complete, it’s climbable!

kilcullen_tower_stats

Getting there. The tower is situated 2km outside Kilcullen, not too far from the motorway or the town. The site is easy to find and there is parking outside the graveyard.

Tower visits May 2009/June 2021

Castledermot – battlements!

The town of Castledermot in Co. Kildare gets its name from a hermitage founded by St. Dermot. The date when it was founded isn’t entirely clear but it seems to have been some time after 810AD. The monastery was raided twice during that century and burned in 1106. The tower is now the only intact remnant of the monastery.

The tower which stands beside St. James’s Church of Ireland is rather unusual looking. Unlike most round towers, it is built from field stones and looks a bit like it has been coated with crinkled bubble wrap. Instead of being topped with the usual conical-shaped roof, it has castle-like battlements. It isn’t known when the battlements were added to the tower or when it lost its original roof. Another unique feature of this tower is that it doesn’t have a raised doorway. It is just 53 centimetres from the ground. The doorway can’t be seen from outside because it is at the end of a short passageway running between the church and the tower. The photo above is the nearest anybody can get to the tower’s doorway, unless they can gain access to the church. It is believed the doorway is original to the tower and not something that was added later.

The tower was used as a belfry in more recent times. According to Brian Lalor’s book, the bell is still up there, as are the internal floors and ladders. The tower is locked up though so it isn’t accessible. The tower seems to have been altered in other ways too, starting with a little window at floor level. It may also be missing a floor at this stage. It is not known for sure where the original monastery church stood at this point.

Apart from the tower, this churchyard also has two high crosses plus the base of a third one. It is also home to the only known Scandinavian style “hogsback” grave slab in Ireland. There is also a reconstructed Romanesque archway close to the church and tower. It is all that is left of a now-vanished medieval church.

Getting There

The tower is right beside St. James’s Church of Ireland, a short detour from Castledermot’s Main Street. There is plenty of parking nearby.

Date of visit: 21st August 2013

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Science Museum in Maynooth

In the early 1990s I attended Maynooth University, eventually graduating with some letters after my name, oodles of soon-to-be-forgotten information in my head and a horror of getting out of bed before 10am. Happy times 😉 Then, as now, the campus was split between two campuses. The shiny shiny North Campus has changed almost beyond recognition from my undergraduate days. Then there’s the South Campus which is shared with the Catholic Seminary established back in 1795. It has scarcely changed since my student days and there’s something nice and comforting about that. It’s a nice place to walk around, though I’m not sure many people do. My guess is that even fewer people know that there’s a rather good science museum a few minutes walk from the entrance gates.

st-josephs-square — St Joseph’s Square and the approximate location of the museum

The museum has been in existence since 1934. Indeed, it was there when I was a student but somehow I never got around to popping in for a look. Then, as now, it had restricted visiting hours. It only opens on Wednesday and Sunday afternoons during the summer months and by appointment at other times. When it was first set up, the museum housed just ecclesiastical items. There is still a section in there dedicated to that but I’m afraid priests’ vestments, holy pictures, chalices, rosary beads etc. don’t really float my boat. Perhaps bridging the gap between religion and er…the grisly, Daniel O’Connell’s death mask is on display. Far more interesting to me is the science section which was later added.

At first, many of the early scientific artefacts added to the collection were connected with Maynooth’s most famous scientist. The Reverend Professor Nicholas Callan, a man who should probably be better known than he is. In 1975, Chemistry Professor Fr. Michael Casey became curator of the museum and he remained in that position until 1998. Under his watch, the collection was expanded greatly. Staff went through the cupboards in the various science departments in the college and unearthed items they felt would be worth putting on display. As it turned out, these cupboards turned out to be a something of an Aladdin’s cave. The museum now has Ireland’s largest collection of scientific instruments on public display. The display cabinets in the place are full of everything from microscopes to telescopes to an early GPS unit. The sheer quantity of items on display is astonishing, seeing as it’s in an obscure little museum.

IMG_20180729_145432 — Professor Nicholas Callan’s Maynooth Battery. Revolutionary in its time but maybe not small enough to fit in a smartphone

The Reverend Professor Nicholas Callan (1799-1864) invented the Induction Coil. For a number of reasons, including him being attached to a seminary rather than a scientific institution, his work was overlooked. He wasn’t given credit for its invention during his lifetime (its invention was attributed to Heinrich Ruhmkorff) but that has since changed. He also invented what became known as the “Maynooth Battery” which improved greatly on previous batteries that already existed. It was commercially successful and has been described as the Duracell of its time. Some of his batteries are on display, as is his induction coil and many other pieces of scientific equipment he created or worked with.

Perhaps now is the time for me to mention my favourite anecdote about the Reverend Callan. He liked to experiment with his batteries and once connected 577 of them together. There weren’t any ways at the time to measure how strong the batteries were so he used to experiment in different ways. One of them was to administer electric shocks to his students. One shock was so severe, it knocked out the future Archbishop of Dublin. After that, he switched (or was ordered to switch) over to turkeys instead.

The museum is well worth a visit if you have an interest in the history of electricity and in old scientific instruments. From what I can gather, very few people know it even exists. Perhaps it is a victim of its restricted opening hours and its location. It’s well worth the effort though. Entry is free but you can pay a voluntary donation.

How to find the museum

Walk in through the college gates which are close to Maynooth Castle. Then immediately turn left and follow the path for 250m or so. You will start to see signs for the museum.

Link to official website

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