‘A Life for a Life’

Irish tower houses, known as castles, were mainly used as fortified dwelling houses. They were tall narrow towers with, usually, only one room, or at most two small rooms, on each storey.

The ground floor was usually a store room and guardroom, the first storey was usually the Great Hall, the second storey sometimes held a Solar (called a sun room because the windows were bigger there than in the other rooms), the third, fourth and even fifth storey would have been bedrooms.

The kitchen would usually have been a separate building in all, but the biggest, of the tower houses. Sometimes a passageway connected it to the main tower

Read &Write:

1. Chapter 1 How tall was the castle at Drumshee?

2. Chapter 1 What was the name of the small, cosy room where Maur and her family sat?

3. Chapter 1 What was hanging from the walls of the Great Hall?

4. Why do you think that the downstairs rooms did not have large windows?

5. Why do you think that the kitchen was a separate building?