House - 16th/17th century

The National Monuments Service's description

Partial standing remains of the 16th-century Vicar’s Choral at 15-16 Vicar Street, Kilkenny City, the site currently occupied by the Kilkenny Inn Hotel (Farrelly et al. 1993, 100-1). The Vicar’s Choral is situated in the N of the Irishtown of Kilkenny, immediately N of the Chancellor’s Manse House at No. 17 Vicar Street (KK019-026121-). The Vicar’s Choral functioned as a residence, common hall and college and Bishop David Rothe described it in the early 17th century as ‘formerly a high class school of excellent character’ (Carrigan 1905, vol. 3, 176). The Vicar’s Choral was established as a secondary residence for the College of Vicars sometime in the 16th century and subsequent to that as the primary residence when the Common Hall ceased in this function. Its outline can be seen on Rocque’s map of 1758 as a street-facing building with a large garden to the rear. Three 19th-century views of the building depict a large, four-bay, Renaissance-style mansion house with Tudor-style windows and doors. By the time the 1st (1839-40) ed. OS 6-inch map was published several buildings and extensions had been added to the rear/E of the building and these are also marked on the 1872 OS map. Hogan (1884, 356), describes the Vicar’s Choral as a, ‘large house in Vicar Street that has been lately modernised, it having lost its high gables and massive chimney piles'. He also noted that the building contained stone architraves on the doorway, drip mouldings, window mullions, and chimney stacks (ibid.). Egan (1884, 230) writes that the remains of the mansion were 'splendid'. In 1953 the Kilkenny Archaeological Society described the building as still retaining some remains of antiquity (Phelan and Gibb 1955, 4). The walls were described as 'four feet thick [1.2m]' and there were old beams in the dining room and kitchen of numbers 15 and 16 (ibid.). They describe the windows to the rear of the building as being of Tudor type (ibid.). The Vicars Choral was largely demolished in the early 1970s and replaced with a public house and supermarket known as the Red Lion (Lanigan and Tyler 1987, 91). Much of what may have been its N and S gable walls remain intact to the N and S of the Kilkenny Inn Hotel. The Red Lion public house was demolished c. 2003 to make way for the Kilkenny Inn Hotel.
Excavations prior to the building of the new hotel in 2004 by Catherine McLoughlin and Emmett Stafford following an initial assessment by John Tierney (Eachtra Archaeological Projects) (03E0707, 03E1901) (Tierney 2003, unpublished; 2006, 275; McLoughlin 2004, unpublished; 2007, 221; Stafford 2007, 221-2). The excavations uncovered the foundations of the middle bays of the house (int. dims. 13m N-S x 6.2m E-W), including an entrance threshold and a window embrasure in its front wall. The Vicar’s Choral was built of mortared stone (av. wall T c. 1.1m), with foundations along the street frontage, a corresponding wall to the W of this, and a wall in the middle bisecting the structure in two, creating two main rooms. The N room (int. dims. 7m N-S x 6.2m E-W) led via a doorway to the S room (int. dims. c. 6m N-S). Internally several stone surfaces were noted, as well as a rectangular stone structure. To the rear/W, several flagstone and cobbled surfaces were noted, as well as a redbrick surface and several walls, all of which were much narrower than the walls of the Vicar’s Choral itself, suggesting later extensions and alterations to the original structure. Although the floor plan of the structure was largely uncovered, the building was not entirely excavated but was preserved in-situ beneath the newly built hotel. To the rear of the Vicar’s Choral, modern buildings, foundations and a cellar had removed any archaeological stratigraphy which may have been at the same level as the structure. However archaeological excavation in the area of the new hotel’s lower ground floor to the E of the frontage revealed a series of medieval pits and stakeholes (KK019-026243-) overlain by layers of possible flood deposits (McLoughlin 2004). A substantial stone built wall with an L-shaped return was also uncovered in this area. Although the function of this structure was unclear it did appear to be of at least early post-medieval date. To the rear of the hotel’s lower ground floor, in the area of a new carpark, layers of medieval and post-medieval silty deposits were preserved beneath the new development.

Compiled by: Cóilín Ó Drisceoil

Date of upload: 13 November 2020

References

Hogan, J. 1884 Kilkenny: the ancient city of Ossory, the seat of its kings, the see of its bishops and the site of its cathedral. Kilkenny. Self published.

Lanigan, K.M. and Tyler, G. 1987 Kilkenny: its architecture & History. Kilkenny.

Stafford, E. 2007 15-16 Vicar Street, Kilkenny: urban. In I. Bennett (ed.), Excavations 2004: summary accounts of archaeological excavations in Ireland 221-2, No. 903. Bray. Wordwell.

McLoughlin, C. 2004 Archaeological testing at 15-16 Vicar Street, Kilkenny 03E1901. Unpublished report. Stafford McLoughlin Archaeology.

Tierney, J. 2003 Archaeological test excavations report for 15-16 Vicar Street, Kilkenny 03E0707. Unpublished report. Eachtra Archaeological Projects Ltd.

Phelan, W.J. and Gibb, J.S. 1955 Irishtown Notes. Old Kilkenny Review 8, 30-5.

Tierney, J. 2006 15-16 Vicar’s Street, Kilkenny: urban. In I. Bennett (ed.), Excavations 2003: summary accounts of archaeological excavations in Ireland 275, No. 1028. Bray. Wordwell.

Egan, P.M. 1884 The illustrated guide to the city and county of Kilkenny. Kilkenny. Self published.

Carrigan, Rev. W. 1905 (Reprint 1981) The history and antiquities of the diocese of Ossory, 4 vols. Kilkenny. Roberts Books and Wellbrook Press.

McLoughlin, C. 2007 Longridge. No archaeological significance. In I. Bennett (ed.), Excavations 2004: summary accounts of archaeological excavations in Ireland, 468, No. 1812. Dublin. Wordwell.

Farrelly, J., O'Reilly, B., and Loughran, A. 1993 Urban archaeological survey - county Kilkenny (2 vols.). Unpublished report commissioned by the Office of Public Works, Dublin.