Saint Canice's Cathedral

Attached six-bay two-storey library, built 1693, possibly incorporating fabric of earlier grammar school, 1539. Renovated, 1950. Refenestrated, 1987. Reroofed, 1995. Now in use as offices. Pitched roof with replacement salvaged slate, 1995, clay ridge tiles, rendered chimney stack, and iron rainwater goods on rendered eaves. Unpainted replacement rendered, ruled and lined walls, 1950, over random rubble stone construction. Square-headed window openings with cut-limestone sills, and replacement timber casement windows, 1987. Pair of square-headed door openings with cut-limestone thresholds, timber panelled doors having overlights, and cantilevered timber canopy over on timber brackets having trefoil apertures. Set back from road in partitioned shared grounds with random rubble limestone boundary wall to forecourt having chamfered coping supporting iron railings, square-headed gateway with dressed rubble limestone piers having tooled dressed rubble limestone dressings, lintel, and no fittings on cut-limestone threshold.

A well-appointed middle-size range forming an important element of the built heritage of Kilkenny continuing the long-standing tradition of charitable and/or church-related institutions on site: a thirteenth-century manse redeveloped as a school in the sixteenth century by the Earls of Ormonde later served as an almshouse in the late seventeenth century before the present library was constructed possibly incorporating some of the fabric of the earlier incarnations, thereby augmenting the archaeological significance of the site. Despite several renovation projects over the course of the twentieth century some of the early character survives intact to make a positive impression on the sub-group formed with the adjacent almshouse (12005021/KK-4766-08-21) while contributing pleasantly to the group and setting values of the Saint Canice's Cathedral complex.