In the 12th century, the political situation made Ireland ripe for Norman conquest and the beginning of castle-building in Dublin and beyond.
As Norman influence spread in Ireland in the 13th and 14th centuries, powerful knights sparked a castle-building boom in Kilkenny and beyond.
As documented in Leap and elsewhere, castle design soon changed when the Irish fought back against the Anglo-Normans in the 15th and 16the centuries.
In the 17th century, strategically important castles at Limerick, Birr and elsewhere played critical roles in a hundred years of bloody wars.
With the advent of the cannon in the 18th and 19th centuries, castles such as Tullynally morphed from military strongholds into lordly family homes.
As political and social unrest swept Ireland in the 20th century, debt-ridden castles fell into disrepair and into the hands of the nouveau riche.