*WEXFORD (_Gir._, v., 314).--Probably built by Maurice Prendergast; first mentioned when taken from his sons in 1176. Mr Orpen writes: "The site of Wexford Castle is an artificial mound. Two of the scarped sides still remain, and the other two are built up above streets. When recently laying some drainpipes, the workmen came upon no rock, but only made earth."
WICKLOW (_Gir._, i., 298).--Existing when Henry II. left Ireland in 1173; he gave it to Strongbow. The Black Castle at Wicklow is a headland castle; it preserves the motte-and-bailey plan, though there is no motte, as there is a small triangular inner ward (about thirty paces each side) several feet higher than the outer bailey, from which it is separated by a very deep ditch cut through the rock. [B. T. S.]
We have here a list of seventy-two castles mentioned in the contemporary history of the Norman invasion. If the list is reduced by omitting Aq'i, Kilmehal, Loske, Rokerel, and Incheleder, which are not yet identified, and five castles of which the identification may be considered doubtful, Caherconlish, Croom, Clahull's Castle, Lagelachan, and Typermesan, sixty-two castles are left, and out of these sixty-two, fifty-two have or had mottes.[1108] In five cases the place of the motte is taken by a natural rock, helped by art; but as the idea and plan are the same it is legitimately classed as the same type.
This list might easily have been enlarged by the addition of many castles mentioned in the various Irish annals as having been built by the Normans. But this would have involved the identification of a number of difficult names, a labour to which the writer's limited knowledge of Irish topography was not equal. The greater number of these sites have now been identified by Mr Orpen, and to his papers, so frequently cited above, we must refer the reader who wishes to study the fullest form of the argument sketched in these pages.
One can easily sympathise with the feelings of those who, having always looked upon these mottes as monuments of ancient Ireland, are loath to part with them to the Norman robber. Many of us have had similar feelings about the mottes of England, some of which we had been taught to regard as the work of that heroic pair, Edward the Elder and Ethelfleda. But these feelings evaporated when we came to realise that it would have been highly unpatriotic in these founders of the British empire to have built little castles for their own personal safety, instead of building cities which were "to shelter all the folk," in the words of Ethelfleda's charter to Worcester. In like manner, wretched as were the intertribal wars of Ireland, it would have been a disgrace to the Irish chieftains if they had consulted solely their own defence by building these little strongholds for their personal use.