archaeological & built heritage assessment - The Heritage Council

5 Urban Development
Small towns and villages are a central component of the history of Ireland, whose fabric and morphology
retain significant traces from the past. The urbanisation of certain areas is due largely to colonisation,
however there are also significant indigenous roots extending back to the proto-towns of the Early
Christian period. There have been three recognisable phases of town development in Ireland: during the
Norman period, in the plantation era of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and under
landlord influence in the eighteenth century (Aalen, Whelan & Stout 1997).
Throughout the medieval period, even to the present day, Ireland has been a relatively lightly urbanised
society. Many towns and villages have less than 1500 inhabitants; fairs and markets periodically brought
the country to the town, while rural families have continually replenished its demography. Furthermore,
the general weakness of industrial growth means that the towns have remained immersed in the
countryside. In recent decades however, more accessible towns and villages have grown demographically
and spatially and with increasing centralisation of important resources and amenities the fabric of the
remoter countryside is weakening.
Monastic proto-towns
Early prestigious Christian monasteries acted as early towns with cult, market, political and educational
functions. By the eleventh century, the major monasteries had well-defined markets, paved streets, artisan
quarters and clearly-differentiated sacred and secular sectors (ibid.). Until the Viking attacks which began
in the ninth century, these monastic proto-towns were the economic and cultural centres of early
medieval Ireland. In the twelfth century, the Church experienced a revolution throughout Europe,
resulting in the foundation of many new religious orders. The Cistercians were the first of these
continental orders to come to Ireland, settling by the Mattock river at Mellifont, county Louth in 1142.
Such was the popularity of this order that thirty-three monasteries had been established by 1230AD. The
Cistercians played a major role in agricultural development, including the creation of internal and external
markets for selling cattle, horses and wool. Because the order depended on its own labour, it created the
institution of the lay brother for the provision of agricultural labour; monastic lands were divided into
farms or ‘granges’, each with its own buildings which accommodated these lay brothers. Within Ireland,
Cistercian abbeys were located in relatively isolated positions but near good supplies of water and with
access to better land. They undertook considerable reclamation of wetlands and woodlands. The town of
Boyle had its origins in the foundation of a Cistercian Abbey, a religious establishment that was to play a
major economic and political role in the development of the town for several centuries.
Influence of the Normans
The Normans carried with them the innovation of the town charter, the administration of which
combined economics and the law within the feudal regime. The importance of the market place and the
town wall physically embodied this new reality in the morphology of the town itself. Some Norman towns
utilised the pre-existing monastic and Viking centres; other developed under the protected areas of feudal
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