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 World Pilgrimage Guide

The Round Towers of Ireland


Round Tower of Cashel    

Scattered with a seeming randomness across the rolling hills of Ireland are the remains of sixty-five round towers. Soaring as high as 34 meters above the ground, the towers are in remarkably fine condition considering the antiquity of their construction. When exactly the towers were constructed is unknown. Scholars have suggested that the most probable construction period was between the 7th and 10th centuries AD, and this hypothesis is based on the fact that nearly every tower is at the site of a known Celtic church dating from the 5th to 12th centuries. Initially each of the towers were freestanding structures but in later times other buildings, primarily churches and monastic foundations, were constructed around some of the towers.

Thirteen towers retain a conical cap and it is assumed that all the other towers once had similar caps that have fallen over the centuries. On a small number of towers battlements have been built on to the top but it is known that these battlements were added at a later date in the Middle Ages. The principles used in construction of the towers is always the same: two walls of block and mortar construction are built a few feet from one another and the space between is filled in with a core of rock rubble. This was a standard method of wall construction utilized by the Romans. Scholars believe that Christian missionaries learned the technique in England or continental Europe and then brought the building technology to Ireland, incorporating it in the building of the massive round towers.

Writing of the dimensions of the towers in his book, Irish Round Towers, Lennox Barrow states: "It is remarkable how little the main dimensions vary. In the great majority of towers the circumference at the base lies between 14 meters and 17 meters and the thickness of the wall at the lowest point at which it can be measured varies from 0.9 meters to 1.4 meters. Doorways, windows, storey heights and diameters also follow clearly defined patterns, and we may well conclude that most of the towers were the work of teams of builders who moved from one monastery to another using standard designs." Barrow goes onto say that: "Most doorways are raised1.5 meters to 4.5 meters above the ground.This is usually explained as being for security, to enable the monks to take refuge inside the towers during times when Viking raiders or bandits were attacking the monasteries. There is probably some truth in this theory but t is possible that the stability of the tower had as much to do with the door heights. The higher you could build before making an opening in the wall the stronger the base would be. Very often the towers were filled in, even as high as the doorways."

This idea that the round towers were erected and used primarily as watch towers and places of protection is strongly debated by an American scientist, Philip Callahan. Writing in his book, Ancient Mysteries, Modern Visions, Callahan discusses research which indicates that the round towers may have been designed, constructed and utilized as huge resonant systems for collecting and storing meter-long wavelengths of magnetic and electromagnetic energy coming from the earth and skies. Based on fascinating studies of the forms of insect antenna and their capacity to resonate to micrometer-long electromagnetic waves, Professor Callahan suggests that the Irish round towers (and similarly shaped religious structures throughout the ancient world) were human-made antenna which collected subtle magnetic radiation from the sun and passed it on to monks meditating in the tower and plants growing around the tower's base. The round towers were able to function in this way because of their form and also because of their materials of construction. Of the sixty-five towers, twenty-five were built of limestone, thirteen of iron-rich, red sandstone, and the rest of basalt, clay slate or granite - all of these being minerals which have paramagnetic properties and can thus act as magnetic antenna and energy conductors. Callahan further states that the mysterious fact of various towers being filled with rubble for portions of their interiors was not random but rather may have been a method of "tuning" the tower antenna so that it more precisely resonated with various cosmic frequencies.

Equally intriguing, Callahan shows that the seemingly random geographical arrangement of the round

Round Tower of Glendalough

The tower of Glendalough is considered by scholars to be the most finely constructed and beautiful tower in all Ireland. Situated in the cleft of a steep and thickly forested valley, the 30 meter tall tower is built of mica schist with a granite doorway. Glendalough was an ancient gathering place of pre-Christian hermits and the first Christian monastery