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THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN FEBRUARY, 2006.

 

The Rock of Cashel's long history
contains gaps of great mystery,
mirroring that of Ireland itself.
 

HISTORY AND MYSTERY
        The Rock of Cashel is great, and important, and, without question, deserves inclusion on any list of major historical sites of Ireland. But — no disrespect intended — the Rock of Cashel is not Ireland’s Tower of London, its Great Pyramid, its Angkor Wat, its Neuschwanstein Castle, or its Great Wall, although it has elements of all of these. Go to the Rock of Cashel expecting something less than compelling architecture perfectly preserved and presented. No. Go to the Rock of Cashel for its imperfections. They hint at its mystery as much as its history by telling an incomplete story of ancient Ireland and leaving much to your imagination. And in Ireland history — like life itself — is very much left to individual interpretation.

ONE MILLENNIUM VISIBLE, ONE MILLENNIUM IMAGINED
        The Rock of Cashel is a collection of

Looking up at The Rock of Cashel
from the valley floor of the Golden Vale.

BRIAN BORÚ, FIRST HIGH KING OF IRELAND
        The Rock of Cashel has even stronger associations with Ireland’s greatest secular leader. The great and daring warrior prince, Brian Ború, was crowned King of Munster at Cashel in 977. Twenty-five years later, Brian, who united the four kingdoms of Ireland in common cause against Viking invaders, was crowned first High King of Ireland. Although the Rock served as Brian’s home fortress, but he maintained his residence in his boyhood home, at Killaloe, the pretty County Clare town at the southern end of Lough Derg. Sadly for Ireland, Brian Ború was killed by retreating Vikings at the conclusion of the Battle

of Clontarf near Dublin. Brian’s unified Celts had

BUILDING ITS HOUSE ON THE ROCK
        Meanwhile, back on the top of the Rock, virtually everything you can see dates from 100 years or more after Brian Ború was High King of Ireland. When Brian’s O’Brien clan descendants deeded the Rock of Cashel to the church in 1101, a period of remarkable architectural change began, converting the early medieval fortress to a high medieval ecclesiastical center and seat of the archbishop. First to be built was the 90-foot high round tower, one of many of these typical Celtic towers still standing in former religious sites throughout Ireland. Soon afterwards, Cormac’s

Medieval sarcophagus in Cormac's
Chapel at The Rock of Cashel.

Chapel was built in Romanesque style and decorated

with some of Ireland’s finest medieval frescoes. A century later a much larger church, the Cathedral, was added to the Rock. It is built in the shape of a cross with a prominent central tower. One arm of the Cathedral ends in an impressive castle structure that served to house residents of the Rock of Cashel. Ireland’s last Cistercian Abbey, Hore Abbey, was erected in the flats of the Golden Vale below the Rock, close enough that the fortified hill could offer the monks safe haven from invading marauders.

TURMOIL AND TREACHERY
        That this unusual complex combined architecture that was partly religious and partly fortified is logical for Cashel, and for the Ireland of the Middle Ages, a time when invaders — first Vikings, then Anglo-Normans — and inter-clan warfare required that even the church protect itself with the strongest of defenses. Ultimately, the Rock of Cashel succumbed to the unrest that continued to wash across Ireland in 1647. Ironically, the final sacking of the great medieval fortress/church came at the end of the turbulent Middle Ages, at the hands of Anglo-Irish Protestants under the leadership of another of the O’Brien clan, the Earl of Inchiquinn, surrogate of England’s Oliver Cromwell. The Rock of Cashel was destroyed, and its Catholic clergy and nationalist Irish Confederate Army were killed by the same family that had once built this greatest of Irish medieval fortress complexes.

The Round Tower: oldest structure
at The Rock of Cashel.

VISITING THE ROCK TODAY
        A visit to the Rock of Cashel today gives you a sense of how life may have been during the Middle Ages in Ireland. The complex is still a ruin, and the stone is as much worn by centuries of Irish gales as by Cromwell’s Parliamentarian army. The Rock of Cashel draws crowds, too — not, perhaps like the Blarney Stone or the Guinness Brewery — but enough so that on any fine weather day you can expect lots of other visitors. Walking through the labyrinth of passages at Cashel provides you with surprises: the life-size stone effigy of a knight, a colorful fresco, the broad, green view of the Golden Vale from the ramparts of the castle or the Cathedral tower. It becomes easy to imagine the Rock of Cashel to be something like and Irish Camelot, an image not lost on filmmakers who have used the site as a movie set.