In recent decades, Irish castle studies have been discussed in various texts, most of them adopting a chronological and categorical approach while introducing readers to the various forms of castle constructed in Ireland over the centuries. These volumes have usually focused on the architectural nuances of Irish castles and have used the evolution of these physical aspects to signify a timeline for the proliferation of castles throughout the Irish landscape. Recent scholarship has begun to relate castles to their wider social and landscape contexts, and while these volumes have no doubt made the first steps, they have not always gone to the next level to show how each successive phase of Irish castle construction may be indicative of its inclusive social network.
This void has been filled by Victoria McAlister's recent addition to Irish castle scholarship. By devoting the entirety of her book to the most prolific castle types within the Irish landscape, tower houses. McAlister not only takes the necessary time to address their social situations but also goes a step further — using tower houses themselves to investigate the socio-economic involvements of their builders, inhabitants and all individuals who counted these structures as part of their lives.
Many publications have described the details of the Irish tower houses, but McAlister devotes her time to the under-discussed but possibly more important external associations of the structures. Using case studies and fieldwork conducted throughout Ireland — including drone surveys performed at Ardmayle Castle and Ballynahinch Castle, both in County Tipperary — the author lays out a case for settlement nucleation surrounding tower houses in rural Ireland. The evidence presented for vernacular buildings within the bawn wall complex immediately adjacent to the castles, as well as the suggestion of occupation around the castles continuing into the early modern period, clearly presents tower houses not as monuments isolated in the landscape but as centres of rural medieval settlement.
The economies that tower houses were a part of feature significantly in McAlister's text. While previous research has suggested that tower houses relied heavily on animal husbandry, the author provides evidence indicating they were almost definitely involved in mixed agricultural practices, likely due to the influence of manorialism. Palynological evidence, even well outside the Pale, and historical documentary evidence show that arable agricultural practices thrived at tower houses even while pastoralism became more significant. The presence of mills at several tower house sites further indicates the influence of manorial economic activity, both from cereal farming and related pastoral practices such as fulling.
These mills, along with fishing weirs and historical documentation referencing the administrative roles of tower houses sited near water, support McAlister's case stating the importance of aquatic resources to tower houses. The same decentralised authority that allowed tower houses to proliferate throughout the Irish landscape allowed their owners to exploit numerous economic avenues, including the levying of tolls and taxes for using the riverine and lacustrine resources under their control. Tower houses also enabled symbolic influence over these areas: their façades were a display of conspicuous consumption meant to be seen as much as their situation was intended to facilitate visual monitoring of their environmental resources.
The siting of tower houses along waterways not only allowed control of their immediate environs, but also propelled the castles and their owners into a much larger network of communication and trade. Tower houses situated near fording points, bridges, causeways, roads and other major routeways, as well as maritime siting near anchorages and landing places, allowed their inhabitants to participate in economic pursuits beyond their local spheres of influence, engaging in trade and transport along waterways that were much more economically viable than those overland.
The social situations of tower houses are by no means limited to rural Ireland, as McAlister discusses later in this volume. Urban tower houses show that the castle type was not exclusively built by the gentry but also constructed by the mercantile classes, showing that a variety of social classes lived in them. The multi-faceted functionalities of the tower house as both the nexus upon which settlements were focused and the facilitator of a larger network of trade and communication show just how emblematic the structure was to later medieval Ireland. Tower houses not only helped to build up the economy that supported the proliferation of the castle type throughout Ireland, but also provided the means by which the surpluses of that economy could be shared with the wider world.
McAlister's volume is not the book to purchase if you desire a close analysis of tower house architecture; rather, as the first comprehensive book to be published focusing exclusively on the tower house castle type, the author focuses instead on establishing tower houses as an essential aspect of the socio-economic structures pervading late medieval Ireland. The evidence presented is not too reliant on individual case studies or even solitary regions such as particular counties. Instead, McAlister paints with a broad brush to include evidence from tower houses all over Ireland, using the proliferation of this castle form itself as evidence for her hypothesis. The author's decision to organise the volume as though the reader were slowly zooming out allows for an understanding of the multiple roles of tower houses incrementally, expanding from the immediate vicinity of tower houses to their position in the world at large.
This book is a major contribution to Irish castle studies and scholarship at large, bridging the gap between one of the most prolific monument types in the Irish landscape and the socio-economic systems it was not only a part of, but facilitated. The volume is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand the inhabitants of tower houses, as well as those who built their lives around them. McAlister builds upon years of scholarship surrounding tower houses, coalescing previous research into a cohesive discussion of tower houses as emblematic of Irish society from 1300 to 1650. Her familiar writing style makes the information and evidence presented even more digestible, resulting in a book that is as important to the advancement of scholarship in Irish castle studies as it is accessible to readers curious about these prolific buildings. McAlister is to be commended highly for the quality of the text, as the author lays the groundwork here for substantive future endeavours into Irish castle studies, acting as a nexus for as many avenues of research as the tower house at the book's core.
