Far the most striking of all the monuments at Ardmore is, of course, the Round Tower which, in an excellent state of preservation, stands with its conical cap of stone nearly a hundred feet high. Two remarkable, if not unique, features of the tower are the series of sculptured corbels which project between the floors on the inside, and the four projecting belts or zones of masonry which divide the tower into storeys externally. The tower's architectural anomalies are paralleled by its history which is correspondingly unique: it stood a regular siege in 1642, when ordnance was brought to bear on it and it was defended by forty confederates against the English under Lords Dungarvan and Broghil. A few yards to north of the Round Tower stands "The Cathedral" illustrating almost every phase of ecclesiastical architecture which flourished in Ireland from St. Patrick to the Reformation--Cyclopean, Celtic-Romanesque, Transitional and Pointed. The chancel arch is possibly the most remarkable and beautiful illustration of the Transitional that we have. An extraordinary feature of the church is the wonderful series of Celtic arcades and panels filled with archaic sculptures in relief which occupy the whole external face of the west gable. St. Declan's foundation at Ardmore seems (teste Moran's Archdall) to have been one of the Irish religious houses which accepted the reform of Pope Innocent at the Lateran Council and to have transformed itself into a Regular Canonry. It would however be possible to hold, on the evidence, that it degenerated into a mere parochial church. We hear indeed of two or three episcopal successors of the saint, scil.:--Ultan who immediately followed him, Eugene who witnessed a charter to the abbey of Cork in 1174, and Moelettrim O Duibhe-rathre who died in 1303 after he had, according to the annals of Inisfallen, "erected and finished the Church" of Ardmore. The "Wars of the Gaedhil and Gall" have reference, circa 824 or 825, to plunder by the Northmen of Disert Tipraite which is almost certainly the church of Dysert by the Holy Well at Ardmore. The same fleet, on the same expedition, plundered Dunderrow (near Kinsale), Inisshannon (Bandon River), Lismore, and Kilmolash.