St. Marys Church — Gardens (kilkenny City By., St. Mary’s Par.)

The parish church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, known as St. Mary’s, is located in the centre of the walled Anglo-Norman Hightown of Kilkenny, immediately beside the town's main medieval marketplace on the High Street. Built around the year 1200 by the Earl of Pembroke and Lord of Leinster William Marshal, the church served the community of the urban parish of St. Mary's (Ó Drisceoil 2020, 165). It would appear the church, or at least a substantial portion of it, had been completed by 1202-5 when Theobald Walter, Butler of Ireland, did repentance there for lands he had seized from the Ossory episcopal estate (Ormond Deeds, 1172-1350, no. 23). The church is situated N of what was originally a c. 1.2 acre precinct, possibly at least partially defined by a stone wall, that contained the main graveyard (KK019-026156-) for the town, as well as dwelling-houses for the chaplains, a hospital/almshouse (KK019-026100-) and at least one churchyard cross (no longer extant). The church that stands today represents a much-diminished version of-the original early 13th-century building and although it was built on a relatively grand scale, in an Irish context, there is little indication for ostentation in its surviving architecture. The few remaining 13th-century Early English Gothic lancets and mouldings are quite plain, none of the roof was stone-vaulted, being instead entirely in timber, and the church never had a crossing-tower or a crypt. Based on architectural, archaeological and historical evidence the plan form of the original 13th-century church can be reconstructed as a cruciform-plan building with a long chancel, an aisled nave of four bays and a S (and possible a N) entrance porch. Clerestory windows in the N and S walls of the nave were set to overlook the roofs of the aisles. A Lady Chapel, entered via an arch on the E side of the S transept, was probably attached to the S wall of the chancel, although when precisely this was constructed remains unknown. In 1343 a large rectangular tower was added to the NW end of the nave. The interior walls of the church would have been plastered and painted with religious scenes but these were almost completely removed during the 18th century rebuilding of the church and the 19th century remodelling, with the exception of a single patch of wall painting overlain by incised compass tracings of geometric shapes that was found preserved on the W face of one of the 13th-century piers in the N arcade of the nave. Very little remains of the wall painting but it appears to represent a figurative scene. A major campaign to modify St. Mary's church for Protestant use between 1748-52 included the demolition of most of the chancel and the nave-aisles and the complete rebuilding of the E and W walls of the transepts, the crossing and the E end of the nave (Dolan 2000, 115-17). This is essentially the church that is depicted on the earliest accurate map of the site by John Rocque dated 1758. The mid-18th century building campaign also saw the church being re-roofed, using timbers that were largely derived from an earlier roof which has been dendrochronologically dated to 1619. Rubble derived from the demolitions of the medieval church was spread out internally to raise a new floor by around 0.7m over the original, medieval, floor level; this, crucially from an archaeological perspective, acted to preserve much of the earlier levels, including burials and funerary sculptures. In 1819 the 14th-century NW tower was demolished to the level of its foundations and the W wall and window of the nave was removed and replaced with a new Gothic-Revival style tower; its porch acts as the main entrance today. Following a decision in 1953 to deconsecrate the church it was transformed into a C of I parish hall, work on which was completed in 1964. As part of this work a 'monuments room' was created in the N transept, which housed a large collection of funerary monuments that have been formerly within the rest of the church, and others from the surrounding graveyard. Subsequent deterioration of the church fabric and vandalism to some of its external burial monuments in the 1990s-early 2000s led in 2009 to the site being purchased from the C of I by Kilkenny Borough Council (now amalgamated with Kilkenny County Council) and the construction of the present Medieval Mile Museum, which was officially opened in April 2017. Around 70% of the internal area of the original medieval church was excavated in 2015-16 in advance of remodelling of the church for the Medieval Mile Museum (Ó Drisceoil 2019, unpublished; 2020, 161-84). Within the church this involved the removal of c. 0.7-1.1m of make-up and floor levels that had been introduced after the major rebuilding of the church between 1748-52. The depth that was reached in the excavation generally equated with the ground level that was maintained within the church between its initial construction in the early 13th century and the rebuilding phase. The earliest evidence for human activity uncovered in the excavations was represented by a deposit of charcoal and burnt material, possibly rake out from a hearth or kiln, that was dumped on the former riverbank and was identified at a depth of 2.75m (49.69m OD) below present ground level, beside the Shee family mausoleum within the E end of the (medieval) chancel. A sample of the charcoal was dated by radiocarbon to AD 430-590. Only less than a metre width of the deposit was uncovered in the excavated cutting so it is difficult to determine if it represents part of a larger settlement or it is simply a discrete deposit, which was fortuitously uncovered in the excavation. Regardless, it does point towards activity on the site in the early medieval period, perhaps connected with the monastery founded by St Patrick at Domhnach Mór, 460m to the S of St. Mary's. The earliest evidence excavated for human burial on the site was a single infant burial radiocarbon dated to cal AD 1170-1290 which was found beneath the foundations of the early 13th-century N wall of the chancel. Since the burial predated construction of the N wall of the chancel in the early 13th century the burial probably belongs to the last quarter of the 12th century and she/he may therefore have been part of the very first community of Anglo-Norman colonists that settled in Kilkenny from c. 1172. There is a suggestion that there was a church at St. Mary's in c. 1175, which bishop David Rothe referred to in c. 1640 as a chapel for earl Richard de Clare's castle at Kilkenny Castle, and it is possible that the child burial formed part of a graveyard associated with this church. No other contemporary burials were found with the child and why she/he was buried in what would at the time have been wet ground on the edge of the river floodplain is something of a mystery. The precise date at which construction of the primary masonry parish church occurred remains unclear and no independent or scientific dating was retrieved during the excavation with which it could be refined beyond the historically-documented early 13th-century date. The excavations demonstrated that the foundations, all of lime-mortar bonded random rubble limestone and offset from the main walls, were first constructed in a trench that cut into the sod level that covered earlier alluvial deposits and the infant burial, and were stepped down for the eastern arm of the church, to follow the steep slope of the natural river-plain escarpment. For the remaining western half of the church, including the crossing, transepts and nave, the foundations were inserted into a much shallower trench that was dug into the firm glacial boulder clay. At the E end of the (medieval) chancel, once the standing walls had been partially completed a series of deposits was dumped to level off the natural slope and this provided the base for the floor (Floor 1, at 52.45m OD) in this part of the church. Throughout the rest of the church the original floor level