Kilkenny Castle and becoming Indiana Jones

Kilkenny is a medieval city, the first capital of Ireland. It still holds that quaintness, the medieval flavor of narrow stone streets, a castle, and a cathedral and round tower. We toured Kilkenny Castle first, which was a great place with fun antiques and even secret servant entrances. It was first built in the 12th century and the Butler family lived there until the 1960’s when they sold it to the state for 50 pounds. Over and over the castle was added onto, refurbished, and expanded. It’s truly gorgeous with a rose garden and park.

After that, I had an appointment to meet with an Irish archaelogist., Patrick O’Neary. I owe him a great deal of thanks for helping me to learn about the differences between a medieval ring fort and a Norman ringworks. What better way than to plan Indiana Jones for the afternoon? So, I abandoned my husband and father-in-law, and went off on an adventure. We drove out into the countryside with his fearless daughter and braved the dangers of blackberry bushes, wire fences, steep ditches, electric cattle fences, and killer Basset Hounds.

The first thing I learned was that ring works were 1000-year-old fortresses built by the Normans. All ring works were built near a church and a water source. The Norman leaders typically supported the local clergy and vice-versa. To identify an old fortress site, we were looking for an unnatural hillside with a ditch. A ring work could be small or large, and usually the houses or structures would be made of wood. The first ring works site we visited was near an industrial park and it was a bit odd to see a parking lot beside an ancient church like this one.

Ring forts, or raths, in contrast were made by the Irish and did not necessarily have a church nearby. The ring fort we visisted had a huge ditch (around 9-12 feet deep) and the distance from one side of the ditch to the other was about 15 feet, maybe more. We were hunted down by a farmer’s killer Basset Hound (who wanted to lick us to death), while we climbed to the top of the ring fort. Trees were everywhere, except in the clearing where the homes would have been. Blackberry bushes covered that area instead. If you could imagine a 2-3 meter high wooden palisade fence encircling it, you can understand that this was a very strong, highly defendable site. Unless a great deal of planning took place, this size of ring fort would have been safe from invaders. At a distance, this looks mostly like a grove of trees, but when you come closer, the ditch and high hill are evident. Most of my characters in my books dwell within ring forts, of different sizes.

I’ll admit, it was fun playing archaeologist for the afternoon. I’ve always wanted to go on a real dig, to search for artifacts and wonder about where they came from. If you could go on a dig, which time period would you want to investigate?