and massive. The chief apartment is on the first floor, upon those vaults, and had another vault over it; there are windows on three sides, and a fireplace (now broken away) at one end; the doorway is at one corner, leading to a bridge and barbican; the windows are of very good work of the thirteenth century, with moulded arches, banded shafts, and capitals having foliage of the Irish character (see woodcuts), though still distinctly in the style of the thirteenth century; they have seats in the jambs. The room above this was plain, and has no windows, but it has a passage in the thickness of the wall, with narrow slits for loopholes, as if it had been for defence only. The walls of the inner bailey remain, with two entrances, but in a ruinous state; the walls of the town appear to have served for a sort of outer bailey.
Borris Castle, near Thurles, co. Tipperary, is probably of the fourteenth century. It is quite plain and massive. There is only one vault, which is high up, having had throe stories with wooden floors under it; the doorways are all pointed; the windows mere loops, square-headed, splayed within, and having a wide chamfer on the exterior. Above the vault is the chief apartment, which has windows of two lights with ogee heads; they are long and narrow, and have rebates for the casements and holes for the bolts. One window only is cusped, and has a sort of perpendicular paneling on the outside; this is clearly of the fifteenth century, but seems rather later than the rest. This apartment is 27 feet long and 18 wide, and was lofty in proportion, with a timber roof, which had battlements on each side, passages at each end across the gable, and a watch-tower or bartizan at each corner, corbelled out on the tongue-shaped corbels which form one of the usual Irish fashions; the interstices between the corbels are machicoulis; these bartizans are half rounds clasping the angle of the tower, another Irish fashion. The staircase to the watch-tower is very ingeniously contrived for making the most of a small space; it is straight, and being only two feet vide, and also limited in space lengthwise, the steps, which are made triangular, like those of a winding staircase, are ten inches high, and placed with the broad end alternately right and left; by this means the ascent is double the usual height in the same space, without inconvenience. The lower part of the walls of the tower batters considerably, which is another feature of common occurrence in these Irish towers. The external measurement of this castle at the base is 43 feet by 38.
The remains of Dowth Castle, co. Meath, seem to be of the fourteenth century; but very little exists, and that little is modernised.
Gralla Castle, near Thurles, co. Tipperary, is a square tower of the fifteenth
