A bawn is the defensive wall surrounding an Irish tower house. It is the

anglicised Anglicisation or anglicization is a form of cultural assimilation whereby something non-English becomes assimilated into or influenced by the culture of England. It can be sociocultural, in which a non-English place adopts the English language ...

version of the Irish word ''bábhún'' (sometimes spelt ''badhún''), possibly meaning "cattle-stronghold" or "cattle-enclosure".See alternative traditional spellings under ''badhbhdhún'' in ''Foclóir Uí Dhuinnín'': http://www.scriobh.ie/Page.aspx?id=26&l=1 . The standard modern spelling is ''bábhún'': Ó Domhnaill, Niall (eag.), ''Foclóir Gaeilge Béarla'', Baile Átha Cliath: Oifig an tSoláthair (1977), p. 73. The Irish word for "cow" is ''bó'' and its plural is ''ba''. The Irish word for "stronghold, enclosure" is ''dún'', whose

genitive case In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive ca ...

is ''dúin''. The original purpose of bawns was to protect cattle from attack. They included

trench A trench is a type of digging, excavation or depression in the ground that is generally deeper than it is wide (as opposed to a swale (landform), swale or a bar ditch), and narrow compared with its length (as opposed to a simple hole or trapping ...

es that were often strengthened with stakes or hedges. Over time, these were gradually replaced by walls. The name then began to be used for the walls that were built around tower houses. English and Scottish names for the same thing include "pele" (hence pele tower) and " barmkin".

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Bellaghy - Bawn
Fortification (architectural elements) * {{fort-type-stub

See also

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External links