Ardmore Round Tower Waterford
Ardmore in County Waterford is one of the finest early Christian monastic sites in Ireland, a small coastal village whose collection of medieval ecclesiastical remains including a round tower of exceptional quality, a Romanesque cathedral and the oratory of St Declan creates one of the most complete and most evocative early Christian landscapes in the south of Ireland. The association of Ardmore with St Declan, who is said to have arrived from Wales to found a Christian community here before St Patrick's mission, gives the site a claim to particular antiquity in the Irish ecclesiastical tradition.
The round tower at Ardmore, approximately 29 metres high and among the most complete and most elegant surviving in Ireland, stands on the clifftop above the village and bay in a position of extraordinary visual power. The tower, built in the twelfth century and tapering to a distinctive conical cap, retains the doorway with its Romanesque carved doorframe that places it in the same tradition of elaborated stone carving visible in the contemporary cathedral below. The combination of the height, the completeness and the dramatic cliff-top setting makes the Ardmore tower one of the finest examples of this characteristic Irish monument form.
The Romanesque arcading on the west wall of the cathedral contains a remarkable series of sculptural panels depicting biblical subjects including the Adoration of the Magi and the Judgment of Solomon in a style of considerable energy and provincial charm. St Declan's Oratory, a small stone building of great antiquity adjacent to the cathedral, is one of the candidate sites for the tomb of the saint and attracts pilgrims to the annual Pattern Day festival.