CARNAUN NATIONAL SCHOOL
ATHENRY - A BRIEF
HISTORY
The Town Walls
By Prof. Etienne Rynne
The walls of
Athenry are easily the finest medieval town-walls remaining in Ireland.
A three-year murage grant being obtained in 1310, it would appear that
the town was originally walled in or about that time.History, however,
records that the town was walled after the Battle of Athenry on the 10th
of August 1316, when the Anglo-Normans under William de Burgo and Richard
de Bermingham severely defeated Phelim O'Connor, King of Connacht, who
was aided by the Princes of Thomond, Meath, Breffny and Conmaicme, the
defeat seriously affecting Edward Burce's Irish campaign.
This record may, however, merely mean that the walls were rebuilt of stone,
the earlier walls being most probably of wood, or, alternatively, that
the existing walls were fortified by the addition of the wall-towers. Only
one of the five town-gates now remains, the North
Gate, and it may be a late 16th or early
17th century addition. Most of the wall still stands,
together five wall-towers (the footings of a sixth were accidentally destroyed
some years ago). The town-walls of Athenry were not of a good military
character being very thin, but nonetheless they had ramparts on the top;
the main defence, however, was a deep and wide moat, traces of which can
still be clearly seen outside the walls. The walls, towers and moat,
were built to provide protection and to lend status to the town.
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