If you want to feel what a real Norman town really was, Buttevant is your place. Standing in the market square early morning, with mist filtering through, one almost feels time peel away by centuries. Again, it is not just romantic fancy; the very bones of that town itself, its layout, remained unaltered since over 700 years ago when it was founded.
The place was not chosen by mere chance. Around 1234, a Norman baron, David de Barry, chose the land with the eye of a soldier.
The gentle slope gave him the perfect defensive position; the proximity of a river would help him to look after commerce and trading. Every street that you walk down today in Buttevant exists solely because of those original, forward-thinking decisions.
In short, the de Barry family erected not just a fortress but a whole society from scratch, as splendid as anything from France or England of those days. Philip de Barry, who took over the line from his father, was well aware of the fact that swords alone did not hold land. He needed men. So he brought in craftsmen, merchants, and farmers, so that his military outpost might grow into a community with a living heartbeat.
What is particularly interesting about the de Barrys is that they never shied away from breaking the rules. They took the Norman feudal system and adapted it to Ireland. They conferred legal rights upon the settlers, instituted weekly markets and mixed Norman law with local Gaelic customs. That very flexibility made Buttevant blossom where other Norman towns simply wilted. They knew how to work the system: by marrying into the right families, they connected this little town in Cork to the royal courts across Europe.
A stroll through Buttevant is like a walk into a lesson on medieval common sense. The planners who laid this place out in the 13th century knew what they were doing. The main street is wide for a reason-it had to be large enough for market stalls and the chaos of the great seasonal fairs that brought great numbers of people from all over Munster.
Notice where they chose to put the church. It overlooks the main road, just about the castle. It truly was a house of God, yet it was also a kind of watchtower. In the Middle Ages, a church was not really a place for Sunday and a day for all; instead, it was an important element in the town’s security and administration. We know from bits of pottery and old coins dug up just outside the walls that it was not an Irish town either: this town was, indeed, a proud cosmopolitan hub full of people with other connections beyond the sea.
Talking about walls is telling an interesting tale of the confidence of Buttevant. Massive and expensive were the undertakings of its construction, and yet you did it if you were going to stay. The remaining pieces of the wall show a certain level of excellence for such an uncommon skill.
Under the arch of the North Gate, old and forlorn as it is, great presence may be felt. Imagine the traveler of those long-past days being shadowed by the gate towering above him, deathly clear that the town stayed important, powerful, and protected. It restricted the freedom of entrance and exit from its secure funds.
The market featured as the pulse of Buttevant. Weekly markets, established by royal charter in the 13th-century, were the lifeblood of the local economy. Farmers would bring their goods here for barter for things they could not produce on their own: salt, iron, maybe a bit of French wine that had been shipped from Cork. The old market cross has since vanished, but the parlance of architectural angles in the marketplace talk about its shapes.
Such commercial energy generated an inheritance of craft. Families of blacksmiths, weavers, and masons would establish premises and continue teaching their trades from generation to generation, thereby drawing a continuity all the way from the medieval world into ours.
What makes Buttevant different is that it is not just a museum. It is an actual town where Cork’s history is not far away. Some holdings of property records keep a direct link to the medieval origins of the town, with some families in the locality being able to trace a lineage back for a few centuries.
Of course, the town must balance its amazing history with the demands of modern-day society. That medieval foundation gives it a kind of sturdiness and character absent in modern developments. The Cahirmee Horse Fair provides the best example. The past shows a trail of metamorphosis for centuries and yet continues to be this huge yearly event that metamorphoses Buttevant into a regional center, as it was always intended to be. Thus, it is in evidence that after all this time, the medieval heart is still beating in this town.