Late last week, I moved into a new apartment closer to the city centre, which has had Internet problems, making getting onto the blog a little more difficult to anticipate. However, now that things seem to have cleared up, I think I’ll be able to post a bit more about my adventures in Ireland (although still no solution for the bad dryer– my room in cover in damp clothes hanging off every available surface to air dry).
Last week, along with my usual class lectures, we had some more field trips to the Garranes Ringfort, the seat of a local king in the Early Medieval period, which was made completely of wood which has now rotted and earthworks which still stand (although the mounds are no longer as high and ditches no longer as deep). Being the seat of a local king isn’t as impressive as it may sound though, there were well over one hundred of the buggers in Ireland at the time. Due to the lack of urbanization at the time, it also lacks the same clout as the impressive fortified cities found on the continent during the same time, but still a fun place to walk around and imagine at.
The same trip also visited Ballincarriga Tower House, which is a standard tower/castle/residence of the Late Medieval, and so I’ll gloss over it quickly by describing it as a standard tower/castle/residence of the Late Medieval (which is to say, a big tall square tower).
The interesting bit of the trip was Coppering’s Court, which is another big stone house, castle-like but primarily just a wealthy nobleman’s house rather than a true defensive feature. It was crumbling to the point where there’s an ever present risk of large chunks of masonry falling down so we couldn’t get inside the thing, and to get close to the thing we needed to go through a fence, than through and electric fence, then hop up over a stone fence (the stone fence was authentic though, going back to the days when Coppering Court was in use– the rest was modern).Sarcasm aside, it was an impressive site, but somewhat lessened with the knowledge that there were a few thousand of the things around back in the day (even some farmers and townspeople could afford the thing! Don’t worry though, this is a proper nobleman’s castle).
