A few more Irish things

In 23 days, my book will go on sale at eharlequin.com. It won’t be in stores yet, but I am absolutely stoked that it will be available online. Because, you know, I have zero patience.

Anyway, in honor of the countdown (and the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day), I thought I’d share some more of my Ireland research. I shared my tour, but I left out a lot of fun facts. So, just for anyone who’s interested, I’ll post some pictures and articles about ancient and medieval Ireland.

First of all, it was fascinating to see peat still burned the way it was long ago. I drove past peat bogs where they were cutting the bricks and I saw trucks hauling it everywhere. This is a peat fire at Bunratty castle. The smell of peat is loamy and sharp, but I found it rather pleasant. There was something archaic about it, almost as though you could imagine the inhabitants of the cottages.

I took a lot of architecture pictures of castles while I was there. This is also the outer wall of Bunratty castle. It surprised me to see how tall the wall really was (about 8-12 feet high and at least 12 inches thick). Although Bunratty is a 16th century castle, I could easily imagine wooden walls this high around the ring forts. Castles were rare in Ireland, and most were built in the early 13th century and later. Only a few were begun in the late 12th century. Even then, the early structures were made of wood. When the Normans invaded, several of the noblemen began constructing early stone castles.

Not all of the stone walls used mortar. There were many stackstone structures, using the weight of the stones to support it. The interior of the early castles used a mixture of powdered limestone to “whitewash” the walls. It was amazing to me, seeing whitewashed walls that still retained the limestone coating over eight hundred years later. (Okay, so they were green and moldy, but still!)

Here’s another photo of a stone ringfort wall. This shot was taken on the Aran Islands, and it’s a larger picture of the stone walls. What’s so amazing about a wall? Parts of the structure date from 1100 BC.