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Description:
To this day, Cashel (above) is an inspiration to anyone who visits. Simply put, it is an awesome sight: an architectural feat which attests to the centuries of labour and the trials of more than a millenium of conquests as both a monastic and political stronghold.

The site comprises the following buildings: Cormac's Chapel (consecrated in 1134), the Sarcophagus (removed to the interior of Cormac's Chapel, believed to be the tomb of King Cormac), St. Patrick's Cross, the Cathedral (believed to have been built in the 1340s), the Crossing and Transepts (built circa 1270), the Nave (15th Century), the Castle (15th Century--some of the side walls fell in 1847), the Cathedral Tower and the Round Tower (92 feet high from plinth to apex, and about 17 feet in diameter at the base).

The National Parks and Monuments Branch (a part of the Office of Public Works) has compiled a scholarly and extensive description of the site, under H.G. Leask, the former Inspector of National Monuments:

St. Patrick dwelt in Munster for seven--some say eleven--years founding many churches for which King Aengus Macnatfraich, we are told, provided maintenance. There were bishops of the See of Cashel from the saint's time onwards but the cathedral church cannot, for some centuries, have been upon the rock itself. It was not until 1101, indeed, when King Murtagh O'Brien (Muirceartach Ua Briain) granted it to the church, that the site became completely ecclesiatical. The Round Tower, however, bears witness to the existence of at least one church there before Murtagh's time and it would appear that for two centuries or more the Rock was both royal residence and holy ground. Some of the kings fulfilled, in circumstances which are not always clear to us, both royal and episcopal offices. The first of these royal bishops recorded is Feilim MacCriomthan; "King of Munster, scribe and bishop". He seems to have wielded the sword more readily than the crosier for he has the discredit of burning more than one monastery outside his own territory. Dying in 847, he was succeeded by Olchobar, who, within his short reign of but two years, was successful in defeating the Scandinavian invaders in two battles, one of which was fought near to Cashel itself.

In 896, or soon thereafter, there was a change of kings at Cashel when the justly famous Cormac Mac Cuileannain was placed upon the throne. Cormac was both king, poet and bishop but not, it seems, bishop of Cashel. Born in 835, he was--for those times,--a comparatively old man at the time of his accession. His short reign, which was not without interruption, ended in 908, but he found time in it for much literary work, the continuation and enlargement of the Psalter of Cashel, the famous Book of Rights, begun almost five centuries before. It is possible that he built the first important church upon the site and it is also conceivable that the Round Tower was erected during his reign. Some time after Cormac's death on the field of battle at Ballaghmoon, the Thomond princes--of the Dalcassian line from Oilioll, who had the right of succession to the sovereignty of Munster in alteration with Eoghanact (Desmond) Kings--gained strength and came more and more into prominence. They were climbing the ladder to supreme power in Ireland. The greatest of them, Brian, was born in 926, became prince of Thomond in 965, and was crowned King of Munster at Cashel in 977. He was not only a very ambitious man but a great organizer and builder, a maker of roads and bridges, forts and strongholds, all steps of consolidation in his progress to the High Kingship of all Ireland which he attained in 1002. His career, however, his twenty-five successive battles with the 'Danes', and his death at Clontarf, on that fatal Good Friday in 1014, in the moment of victory over the 'foreigner', belongs to the history of Ireland rather than to Cashel, albeit it was his capital. To it he summond a Feis where new laws were enacted and here also, perhaps, he brought up to date the famous Book of Rights with its long tale of the tributes due to the royal dignity and its maintenance. Fourteen years after his death, in 1028, Donogh, the Ard Righ, also convened an assembly at Cashel at which further laws were passed.

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