The Round Tower, Glendalough

Description

SMR No.: WI023-008002-

Monument Type: Round Tower

The Round Tower is to the NW of the cathedral on slightly higher ground within the main graveyard with its round-headed granite doorway facing the cathedral. Built on two offsets, it had five floors above the entrance carried on beams set into beam-holes. There are four trabeate windows at various levels and a further four at the cardinal points, just below the reconstructed conical cap. A rectangular channel runs right through the thickness of the wall just below the doorway. Round towers are a typical feature of early medieval Irish monasteries and are likely to have been built mainly between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries AD. They symbolized a monastery's power and were probably used as bell-towers.