Ireland - Castle Ross

Ross Castle was a guided tour, which happened to be free on Wednesday's so we got lucky there! (Admission was not expensive, and I consider it worth it). The downside here - you were not allowed to take pictures on the tour. Boo. But we learned a lot about tower houses, and it was amazing to see it, as it has been fully restored and is not in ruins. They used building material and methods as would have been in the 1400s, and the furnishing are authentic from the period as well.

Tower houses, as I have talked about in the other "castle posts" I've made were just very safe places to live in the 1400 and 1500s - once the invention of gunpowder came around and canon fire became a thing - they were significantly less safe. Not safe enough to make it worth the inconvenience of living in them - so the wealthy, instead of using their wealth to be safe, used their funds for prettier homes - the mansion castles that came in the 1600s & 1700s. If you're in danger anyway, you might as well be surrounded by beauty and all the ease and comforts the time would afford.

 The castles became ruins, when the government began charging a roof tax for all structures with a roof on your land. Because no one wanted to live in the Tower House anymore, and they then certainly didn't want to pay a tax for it, they took the rooves off. So they paid no tax. But with the Tower now exposed to the elements, they fell into ruins quickly. This is true of most ruins - Castle Ross' situation was a little different as it became a military installation at some point. But in the end, same result. They removed the roof on these intentionally to allow them to ruin.

When they rebuilt the roof on this one (and Bunratty, an upcoming post), they copied the likeness of the ONLY Tower House in Ireland to still have it's original roof. It is near Dublin, and shockingly was occupied as a home all the way into the 1800s, and by then, they were "protected" by the government, and you weren't just allowed to take the roof off. They are oak, and vaulted, and GORGEOUS.

We can see here, this floppy wristed fellow in an ancestor of none other than our very own Shaughnessy Vale, first of her name. She, also, has an aversion to everything that is called "pants" and "shoes" 😂

Sir Thomas Lee, Captain General of the Kern Marcus Gheerhaerts, 1594.
Lee, an English officer, is shown bare legged like his men and carrying an Irish lance. English officials were worried that servants of the Crown would 'lapse into barbarism' by adopting Gaelic ways.

Drawing from 1600s of Kern or Cearnaigh. These were bands of lightly armed mercenary foot soldiers. They went barefooted and carried Irish swords and the Irish scian or dagger.

We learned a few neat tidbits we hadn't known or thought of - These tower houses have very narrow stairwells, for defensive purposes - and having climbed them, I can attest to the fact that you couldn't carry anything bigger than a tray up or down them really. So all the furniture was built in place, and never moved (as it wouldn't be possible). 

We learned that the average height for an Irishman in the 1400s/1500s was actually quite tall at 5'10" - the beds in that period are all short. Not because the people were short, but because they slept sitting up. Because of the dark, smokey and unsanitary conditions of life in that era, (including those in tower homes), respiratory issues were a big thing, and apparently sleeping upright was helpful. Also you could fit more people in a room. Even though tower house owners were wealthy, there was still only 1 bedroom in the tower, which everyone had to sleep in (and then one smaller room off of that with no fireplace for the servants to all sleep in).

The floors were often stone - though one or two of the floors would have a wood floor to help with the weight of the thing overall - but they would use threshing straw on the floor to soften it for the feet and warm it up - there was a raised bump of stone at the entrance of each room - meant to keep the threshing inside the room where it belonged, so it didn't get dragged out and lost down the stairs. Hence the term we still use today, a threshold.

They were very very afraid of fire - it was a big concern, as invasion was not a likely problem - but catching your floor on fire was something they were very very cautious about.

This door was built vertically on this side and horizontally on the other side, so it was very difficult to break down. The studs are nubs now for safety, but they would have been sharp and pointy.

It was so pretty inside! The tapestries and the furnishings are amazing. The garderobe (bathroom/cloakroom) was explained as multipurpose room - a walk in closet and toilet in one. The ammonia smells coming back up the shafts of the chutes that were the toilet was thought to kill (or did kill?) bugs. So they kept spare clothing in there, so that it wouldn't have bugs. Which leads me to believe that there was not one corner of  the "civilized" world at the time that didn't just reek of human waste. I guess we could attribute the phrase "gag a maggot" to this kind of practice 😂

Dirty, stinky, and difficult to live in, yes yes yes. But also. WOW. And I want one.