224
THE ESSEX NATURALIST
in spite of the missionary zeal of a few Christian centres of great
repute and erudition in earlier centuries. The Irish peasantry
held to an undercurrent of pagan fertility religion for long after
becoming nominally Christian, as, of course, is the case also in
England. When we consider those curious evidences of an earlier
cult, even now to be seen over the doorway of at least one
Christian church in Ireland, and other extensive evidences of
survival of a fertility religion into the present millenium, there
seems little doubt that the Irish round towers could have been
intended also as phallic emblems thereof'1, as similar towers in
India are to this day undoubtedly and obviously symbolic
lingams. We simply do not know with certainty : let us leave this
controversial field, noting again the points of resemblance to our
own examples (the high doorway, often to the East, the look-out
windows) and pass to other places where Round Towers un-
doubtedly were built for refuge.
India has many such towers: at Gowar, the round tower has
its door ten feet from the ground. On the road from Arcot to
Bangalore on the plains of Hindustan, and on the borders of
Mysore, there are many round towers with doors well above
ground and with space under the floor at door level for the storage
of food and goods (Wise5).
Nearer home, among the ancient tribes of the Caucasus, most
of the villages have round towers where (I quote from an 1884
account) "the shepherds hold watch and where, in times of peril,
they deposit all their valuables, with their women and children"
.... "When they have drawn up the rope-ladder to the door
some twelve feet above the ground, they occupy a vantage from
which they can fight securely"5.
In March 1961, there was excavated in Jericho the base of a
round tower built for defence of the city some 7000 years ago : the
ratio of wall-thickness to external diameter is not unlike that of
our own round towers.
Italy has round towers at Ravenna and elsewhere which
resemble the East Anglian examples quite closely1: one is firmly
dated 549 A.D. and all are said to have been built for defence or
refuge against the invading Northmen, the Goths who ravaged
the plains of Italy in the early middle ages.
Sardinia has over 7500 ruinous stone structures of "round
tower" type, built however, in the later Bronze Age, say from 3200
to 2400 years ago6. These striking features of the barren island
landscape, the Nuraghi, were constructed beyond all doubt for
defence and have, perhaps, more in common with the Brochs of
Scotland than with the other round towers I have already men-
tioned. The normal height of a nuraghe is, or was, about 60 feet,
the base diameter being 30 to 40 feet: there is a pronounced
tapering or 'batter' towards the top, and the walls, of great thick-
ness, serve to accommodate small chambers and a staircase.
As to the Scottish Brochs, their age is not so well established7.
They are often said to be "Pictish" and this could put them any-