Building, Killanny, Co. Louth

The motte and bailey was a form of early medieval fortification introduced to Ireland by the Normans, consisting of a raised earthen mound, the motte, connected to an enclosed courtyard, the bailey, at ground level. What sat on top of the Killanny mound, and why it took an octagonal form, remains an open question.

The record of this structure comes from Thomas Wright's 1758 publication, in which Book I, plates XV and XVI depict the motte with the octagonal building clearly rendered on the mound's summit. Wright was an English antiquarian and designer with a particular interest in garden architecture and ancient monuments, and his illustrations, though sometimes fanciful in their interpretation, were based on sites he recorded in the field. Whether the octagonal structure he drew at Killanny was a surviving medieval remnant, a later addition to the mound, or an embellishment introduced by his draughtsman's hand is impossible to say with certainty. What is certain is that no physical evidence of it remains today.