Killala Round Tower

Cloigtheach Chill Ala — the round tower of the ancient O’Dubhda see

The Round Tower of Killala — Cloigtheach Chill Ala — rises more than twenty-five metres above the rooftops of Killala town on the west shore of Killala Bay, in north Co. Mayo. It is the last standing medieval structure of what was once an important early-Irish monastic establishment, the seat of the Bishops of Killala and, by ancient association, one of the principal ecclesiastical centres of the old O’Dubhda lordship of Tír Fhiachrach. Several O’Dubhda churchmen sat in the bishop’s chair here; one of them, a Franciscan friar, was hanged for the Mass.

I. Location and Setting

The tower stands in the centre of Killala town, on rising ground beside the Cathedral Church of St Patrick (Church of Ireland) — the ground on which the original monastery is thought to have stood. From the top of a flight of stone steps on Tower Hill the tower is visible above the low roofs of the town, a tall finger of coursed limestone topped with a conical stone cap.

The coastal bay immediately to the east is the same Killala Bay on which, centuries later, the three medieval religious houses of Moyne, Rosserk, and Rathfran would be founded — all of them within sight of the tower across the water, and all of them standing on land that had belonged, or still belonged, to the O’Dubhda.

II. The Tower

Built of limestone on a low plinth, the tower stands more than twenty-five metres (over eighty feet) high. Its round-headed doorway is positioned three metres above ground level — a security feature common to Irish round towers, intended as much against raiders as against the Viking incursions that had prompted the construction of such cloigthíthe (“bell-houses”) across Ireland from the late tenth century onward. The tower at Killala is generally dated to the twelfth century. A single small window opens high in the cap stage; the conical stone roof is intact.

An on-site interpretive plaque, in English and Irish, describes the wider monastic establishment that once surrounded the tower — small oratories for private prayer, cells where the monks slept, graveyards, and a community church — probably on the site where the present cathedral now stands.

III. Origins — St Patrick and Bishop Muiredach

The Killala foundation is one of the most ancient in Connacht. Tradition — carried in the Patrician lives and still attested on the plaque at the tower — holds that the original monastery goes back to the fifth century, when St Patrick appointed Muiredach as the first Bishop of Killala. The see has been held continuously since. The Irish name Cill Ala means “church of Ala”; the modern town takes its name from the monastery that preceded it.

IV. The O’Dubhda Bishops of Killala

Over the medieval centuries the see of Killala was served by a succession of bishops drawn from the local families of the diocese. Several of the O’Dubhda appear in the line. The sept’s stronghold in Tír Fhiachrach and its landed status gave it the means to educate its sons and the ecclesiastical influence to place them. Thomas Mac Hale records the O’Dubhda bishops of Killala among the principal churchmen of the name, alongside those of the sister see of Achonry (Around and About Tír Fhiachrach, 1990).

V. Father John Ó Duada, Franciscan Martyr, 1579

The most remembered O’Dubhda churchman of the persecution era is Father John Ó Duada, Franciscan friar, who was tortured and hanged in 1579. He belongs to the early and severe phase of the Elizabethan persecution — the generation in which the crown moved to suppress the Catholic religious orders in Ireland by force of arms. He is numbered, with many of his Franciscan brethren, among the Irish martyrs of that persecution.

VI. The Jacobite and Williamite Years, 1641–1691

In the following century members of the name appear repeatedly in the Catholic cause. O’Dubhda men are recorded among the Confederate Catholics of the 1641–52 wars and, a generation later, in the army of the Catholic King James II of England during the Williamite War in Ireland (1688–1691).

Tradition — as Mac Hale records it — holds that the head of the sept at that time was killed at the Battle of the Boyne on 1 July 1690, and that he was said to have been seven feet tall. The detail is of a piece with the folklore that surrounds the Jacobite defeat: a giant of a man at the head of his people, falling in the battle that broke the old order in Ireland.

VII. 1798 — The French at Killala

A century later Killala entered history again. On 22 August 1798 a French expeditionary force under General Jean Humbert came ashore at Kilcummin Strand, a short distance north of Killala town, in support of the United Irish rising. The French occupied Killala for several weeks; Bishop Joseph Stock of Killala, confined in his own palace, left A Narrative of What Passed at Killala in the Summer of 1798 (Dublin, 1800), which is one of the primary documents of the Year of the French. Many of the north-Mayo country people, including men from within the old O’Dubhda territory, rose with the French and fought at the engagements at Ballina, Castlebar (“the Races of Castlebar”), and finally at Ballinamuck.

For the O’Dubhda country’s own route through the events of that year, see the self-guided tour of the 1798 Rising in North Connacht.

VIII. The Tower Today

The tower stands in the centre of Killala town, immediately adjacent to the Cathedral Church of St Patrick. Access to the exterior is free and unrestricted at all times of the year; the interior is not open to the public. The site is a National Monument in the care of the Office of Public Works. Sacred Landscapes interpretation panels in English and Irish explain the monument on the approach from Tower Hill.

Sources

• On-site interpretive plaque, Killala Round Tower / Cloigtheach Chill Ala (Co. Mayo County Council, Sacred Landscapes).
• Thomas Mac Hale, Around and About Tír Fhiachrach (Inniscrone, 1990) — for the O’Dubhda bishops of Killala, Fr John Ó Duada’s martyrdom, Confederate and Jacobite service, and the Boyne tradition.
• Joseph Stock, Bishop of Killala, A Narrative of What Passed at Killala in the Summer of 1798 (Dublin, 1800).
• Placenames Database of Ireland (logainm.ie) — Cill Ala (Killala town and parish, Tirawley, Co. Mayo).
• National Monuments Service, Historic Environment Viewer — record for the Round Tower of Killala.
• Samuel Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837), s.v. Killala.