Networked Control: Tower Houses in Ireland

This chapter focuses on Dún an Óir, a late-medieval tower house built by the O’Driscoll clan on Ireland’s most southerly inhabited island. The tower house is physically isolated in the landscape and architecturally anomalous to the commonplace West Cork ‘type’, many of which were also built by the O’Driscolls. The chapter analyses Dún an Óir through a comparison with the contemporaneous examples in West Cork’s Roaringwater Bay, and evaluates the architectural differences drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT). It will be argued that these differences are reflective of symbiosis rather than divisions and that the O’Driscoll’s contemporary tower houses each had a different role within a maritime culture. It will be set out that one example appears to have been the central node in the O’Driscoll network with others, including Dún an Óir, performing subsidiary roles. It will be explained that only in compilation did they aid the O’Driscoll control and management of the area. This allows a reconceptualization of the medieval tower house and a deeper understanding of late medieval society.