What is recorded here

An unknown knight’s armoured legs still rest upon a lion carved for St Francis' Abbey, Kilkenny, though the man’s name and much of his body have been lost. The fragment emerged in 1862 when someone noticed a building stone in a neighbouring house was not ordinary stone at all. It joined other broken pieces of armed figures, animals and inscription in the Kilkenny Archaeological Society’s collection before entering the National Museum of Ireland. What remains is sharp enough to imagine: a warrior laid out with pride, reduced by time to a lion’s back and the memory of weight upon it.

Web summary: Formerly from St Francis' Abbey (KK019-026101-), currently housed in the National Museum of Ireland. According to Bradley (1980, 15, no. 56) this fragment of an effigial tomb consists of, ‘a portion of a lion upon which the armoured legs of a knight rest’. It was discovered in 1862 as a building stone in a house adjacent to the friary (ibid.). It is described by Hunt (1974, vol. 1, 138, no. 39) along with other fragments from an effigial tomb currently in the National Museum, including, ‘a small fragment of the left shoulder of an armed effigy; a lion with the toe of a sabaton on its back [mentioned above]; another animal (a dog?) with the point of a woman’s shoe on the back, and several pieces of inscriptions. All these fragments came from the collection of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society. Compiled by: Jean Farrelly

Effigial tomb fragment, medieval period. Significantly linked to St Francis' Abbey, Kilkenny, and now preserved in the National Museum of Ireland, representing ecclesiastical funerary art of the late medieval Irish monastic tradition.

The monument record does not grant public access. Check the route and ask the landowner before entering private land.