Tower

[OBrien]

For Lafoto....

 

[Meysha]

ok, first of all,,, nice pic. creepy with the snow in the cemetary!

and now two questions, why would they have a tower in a cemetary? and why is this pic for laphoto?

 

[LaFoto]

Meysha, it is "for me" because O'Brien and I talk about this place (Glendalough in the Wicklow Mountains just south of Dublin in Ireland) in another thread. I've been there many, many years ago, and almost all the tourists who come to Ireland go there. The cemetary and the monastery are very famous. That's why he put it up for me .

Thank you, O'Brien, for putting up this photo for me.
Yes, this is THE view you get - my parents must ALSO have a similar photo in their Ireland-albums, from 1966 even....

 

[OBrien]

ok, first of all,,, nice pic. creepy with the snow in the cemetary!

and now two questions, why would they have a tower in a cemetary? and why is this pic for laphoto?

Well Meysha, you've already had the second one answered, and your first question should probably be the other way round - why there is a cemetary beside the tower? The place where this was taken is an ancient monastic site, founded by St Kevin in the 6th century. The tower was built in c950ad and was used by the monks as a lookout point and a way of protecting their valuables from invading vikings. The entrance into the tower is about 20 feet off the ground, so at the first site of horned helmets, they'd all scramble up the ladder, pull it inside and presumably heat up the boiling oil to pour on the attackers.

There were 7 different churches on the site, mostly ruined now, but the graveyard attaching to one of them was still being used up to the middle of this century. At some point, historians and archeologists managed to convince people that the site was far too valuable in an historic sense to continue to dig fresh graves and encroach further from the tower. Its an interesting place that I'd like to spend more time photographing.