 HISTORY
OF ATHENRY
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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