He became a contributor to Bolster's Quarterly Magazine, an antiquarian journal published in Cork, and so became acquainted with a number of Irish archaeologists and literary men, including Abraham Abell, William Willes, Matthew Horgan and Francis Sylvester Mahony.
[1] He was particularly interested in searching for the early records engraved on stone known as Ogham inscriptions, and he saved many of them from destruction by removing them to his own home, where they formed what he termed his megalithic library.
[2] Windele also devoted much time to the study of early Irish literature, and he made a large collection of manuscripts.
He also wrote A Guide to Killarney, and frequently contributed to the Dublin Penny Journal and to the Proceedings of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society, of which he was a member from its foundation in 1849.
In 1860 he edited Matthew Horgan's Cahir Conri, an Irish metrical legend, with a translation into English verse by Edward Kenealy.