Qualla: Waterloo Round Tower https://qualla.com/waterloo-round-tower en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/1/z/waterloo-round-tower-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Waterloo Round Tower https://qualla.com/waterloo-round-tower Waterloo Round Tower: Introduction https://qualla.com/waterloo-round-tower/ Photo credit Podstawko, CC BY-SA 4.0. Locals call it Father Matt's Butterchurn. The Waterloo Round Tower narrows as it climbs - not by clever design but, the story goes, because the parish ran out of money before the masons could reach the top. Tucked into Ballygibbon townland two kilometres north of Blarney, the tower stands beside St. Mary's Church on a low hill, overlooking the River Martin and the eighteenth-century Putland's Bridge that crosses it. It was finished in 1843, more than two decades after the Battle of Waterloo for which the surrounding village was named, and it remains one of the more eccentric specimens of Cork's nineteenth-century antiquarian enthusiasm.

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/1/z/waterloo-round-tower-wp/gc1z-waterloo-round-tower-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Waterloo Round Tower: A Priest, an Antiquarian, and a Landlord https://qualla.com/waterloo-round-tower/ Photo credit Podstawko, CC BY-SA 4.0. The foundation stone was laid on 27 July 1836 by Father Matt Horgan, the parish priest of Whitechurch and Blarney, on land granted by the local landlord, a man named Putland whose family also lent its name to the nearby bridge. Father Horgan was no ordinary country cleric. He had...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/1/z/waterloo-round-tower-wp/gc1z-waterloo-round-tower-a-priest-an-antiquarian-and-a-landlord.mp3 0:06 2 full Waterloo Round Tower: The Butterchurn Shape https://qualla.com/waterloo-round-tower/ Photo credit Podstawko, CC BY-SA 4.0. Round towers in Ireland are usually tall, straight cylinders, gently tapering toward a conical cap. The Waterloo Round Tower is rounder than that. It bulges in the middle and pinches toward the top, following a curve that locals likened to a butter churn - the wooden vessel in wh...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/1/z/waterloo-round-tower-wp/gc1z-waterloo-round-tower-the-butterchurn-shape.mp3 0:06 3 full Waterloo Round Tower: Father Horgan Beneath the Hill https://qualla.com/waterloo-round-tower/ Photo credit Podstawko, CC BY-SA 4.0. Father Horgan did not live to see his tower used as he had hoped. He died in 1848, just five years after its completion, during the worst years of the Great Famine that emptied so much of rural Cork. He is said to be buried in the grounds of St. Mary's Church, in the shadow of th...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/1/z/waterloo-round-tower-wp/gc1z-waterloo-round-tower-father-horgan-beneath-the-hill.mp3 0:06 4 full Waterloo Round Tower: Bringing the Bell Back https://qualla.com/waterloo-round-tower/ Photo credit Podstawko, CC BY-SA 4.0. By the early 2000s the tower needed help. Mortar had failed, the bell had fallen silent, and the picturesque setting had grown overgrown. In 2009, after an eighteen-month effort, the Waterloo Renewal Group - a small community committee that included Heritage Council of Ireland gr...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/1/z/waterloo-round-tower-wp/gc1z-waterloo-round-tower-bringing-the-bell-back.mp3 0:06 5 full Waterloo Round Tower: The Antiquarian Imagination https://qualla.com/waterloo-round-tower/ Photo credit Podstawko, CC BY-SA 4.0. Across nineteenth-century Ireland, romantic-era antiquarians built and restored monuments that tried to reach back across a thousand years of severed history. Some efforts were earnest, some scholarly, some closer to fancy dress. The Waterloo Round Tower belongs to that family - ...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/1/z/waterloo-round-tower-wp/gc1z-waterloo-round-tower-the-antiquarian-imagination.mp3 0:06 6 full