Timahoe Round Tower

Twenty minutes from the castle, the round tower at Timahoe stands complete, without floors or ladders, on the site of a monastery founded in the seventh century by Saint Mochua, a warrior who converted to Christianity at thirty.

It has one of the finest four-order Romanesque doorways in Ireland, elaborately carved and decorated with human heads, chevrons and capitals. Doorways like these are usually reserved for important churches, which makes Timahoe unique in round tower architecture. The decoration is labour intensive on a flat surface; on a curved one it is remarkable.

The monastery burned in 1142 and was re-founded by the O'Mores.