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period. The small size of tower houses meant their construction was within the financial reach of many, including lords, ecclesiastics and merchants. They were also popular with the emerging gentry class. As prominent features of both rural and urban Ireland, they can be used to understand not only the people who lived inside them, but also the individuals who lived and worked around them. Few studies have looked at Gaelic-Irish, Anglo-Irish and early modern building forms as a unified whole. Fewer still have sought to locate tower houses within a wider tradition. Ó
-military tenure) holders, to farmers or customary tenants, to cottiers or poor tenants, who were the ones owing labour services (Murphy and Potterton, 2010 ; Simms, 1983 ). There was also the peculiarly Irish class of gaviller – akin to tenants at will of the lord, though they were personally free and their lands in reality were hereditary (Otway-Ruthven, 1951 ). Being free tenants meant they could appeal to the royal court over their lord's authority to assert their rights (Hennessy, 1996 ). There was also the native Irish betagh, who held land in common and also owed the
families and an emerging gentry class. As has consistently been seen, these people were displaying their social upward mobility through construction. In addition, there was increased percolation of consumption to new sectors of society, characterised by cheaper versions of consumer goods. Consumption and construction tied the Irish wealth-accruing classes with their European counterparts. The international socio-economic trends following the Black Death did not exclude this westernmost island. The difference between the new social classes in early modern capitalistic
. Conclusion: The tower house as nucleus of water-based communication Most identifiable tower house occupants were local lords, meaning that commercial maritime networks were not controlled solely by merchants in late medieval Ireland. Interesting recent publications suggest that many tower house builders were members of the gentry class, with tower house architecture used as part of a greater scheme of social aggrandisement (Oram, 2015 ). It is impossible with the state of extant documentary material to determine the builders and occupants of the
brought new craft methods into the regions in which they settled (Gaimster, 2014 : 73). Although we are, rightly, warned against making sweeping statements regarding the emulation of lordly habits by the emerging capitalist class (or vice versa) in the later Middle Ages, it is hard not to ponder this dynamic when we are faced with the architectural evidence. A good instance of this comes from Thomastown, where the residences associated with its merchants strongly echo specific and unusual features found at the nearby Anglo-Norman Grenan Castle, founded by a follower
the gender display within. Indeed, subtle questions like attitudes to gender in the past cannot be understood unless the social context is first explored. In the introductory sections of this volume we discussed the materiality of shoes. This discussion revealed different attitudes towards shoes or dress mediated by class, status, gender, life course and individual or group expression. Indeed, social science understands that our contemporary attitude towards gender, for example, is mediated by generation, personal experience, education, class and regional or
expectations and expressions of gender identity (Reay, 1998 ). Modern Australian, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, English or American societies all have subtly, and not so subtly, different approaches to the body, family, marriage, childbirth, social class, gender and age or education, based on wider cultural contexts like history, religion or law. Most importantly there is not in fact a single approach to these ideas in any of the places described. Indeed, your own attitude to family, for example, might depend on your past, your background and, importantly, the regional or class
(Sayer, 1992 : 105). This will depend on a chronological context; for example, the early Anglo-Saxons did not have universities and so did not have professors. This equally applies to a multitude of other different types and shapes of institutions which structure society: land ownership, law, fostering, religion, nuclear families, prisons, servitude, class structures, gender attitude or kingship, which may exist in different forms or not at all, depending on the society in question. However, it is the associations between people which are crucial; the relation between
nor protection afterwards. (Whitelock, 1955 : 391) These documents allow the kin to abandon the agitator and, provided they give him no support in the form of food and protection, then he alone bears the responsibility for the feud and its compensation. Notably: [1.] If henceforth anyone slays a man, he himself to bear the feud, unless he can with the aid of his friends within twelve months pay compensation at the full wergild , whatever class he [the man slain] may belong to. (Whitelock, 1955 : 391) It is interesting that the term ‘friends
-shell beads fit into Brugmann’s group C (Hines and Bayliss, 2013 : 208). Rock-crystal beads have not been the subject of a detailed study, but Dickinson ( 1976 : 206) suggested that they tend towards a sixth-century date. Pendants come in a variety of forms; bracteates, for example, have been studied because of their Scandinavian connection, and many English example are copper or silver, not gold. Mogens Mackeprang ( 1952 ) identified five classes and Marit Gaimster ( 1992 ) argued that they may have been in production for just two or three generations during the sixth