Reconnecting Cultural Landscapes: Dún an Óir, West Cork, Ireland

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses ways to reconnect late medieval castles in Ireland with their wider cultural landscapes in the present day as well as in the past. It approaches landscapes in the widest possible terms, not only the physical landscapes in which a castle was built, but the social landscape of the medieval period, the succeeding cultural and literary landscapes, and the social landscape to which it may belong today. The paper focuses on a late medieval tower house called Dún an Óir with the aim of capturing a fuller understanding of the place in the past and the present. Dún an Óir is a place at risk, on the edge of Ireland, on the brink of the West Cork cliffs and thus at the mercy of the increasingly frequent Atlantic storms, surges and high winds. As well as using familiar archaeological methods, as far as they are feasible at this site, the research described in this paper embraces sources sometimes overlooked as of secondary value, such as placename evidence and contemporary local accounts.

KEYWORDS:

• Tower houses
• climate change
• Ireland
• heritage
• O’Driscoll

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the Department of Culture, Heritage and Gaeltacht for providing access to the archive relating to the castle. The author is indebted to the current O’Driscoll Clan Chieftain Marie Deese Driscoll, Bernie McCarthy and others in West Cork, for their openness and warmth during the research process. A grateful thank you to the reviewers for their extremely useful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Dr Sarah Kerr is based in the Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the late medieval buildings of Ireland and Britain with particular focus on their role in constructing identities in the past and present. She is currently working on a comparative project spanning Ireland, Scotland and Denmark.