Tomb - chest tomb

The National Monuments Service's description

At St Mary's parish church (KK019-026115-) in Kilkenny. A late 16th-century chest tomb (L 1.95m; Wth (as exposed) 0.58m; H 0.76m), made from fossiliferous limestone. It is set into a 13th-century tomb-niche in the centre of the N wall of the N transept of the church. It was uncovered, sealed beneath late 18th-century floor level, during the 2015 excavations (Ó Drisceoil 2019; 2020, 169). Blocking of the tomb niche obscuring some of the top slab and its inscription. The predella on which the tomb of Richard Rothe FitzEdward (d.1637) rests fits around the SW corner of the tomb. The lower step of the limestone paving predella also partially obscures the carved W side panel. The base of the tomb rests on a 13th/14th-century cross-slab fragment (KK019-026289-). A probable stone-lined grave was identified in probing below the altar tomb. The top slab or mensa is decorated in false-relief with an eight-armed segmental cross-head with stylised fleur-de-lis terminals. The cross-head rises from a shaft which in turn, rises from a stepped base. The shaft is flanked on either side by streamers, which are inscribed. At the top of the shaft is a plain knob. The right (E) side panel is blank. The left (W) side panel is decorated with a line of five foliage motifs above a partially obscured line of triangles, possibly the top of a heraldic device. The front (S) panel shows a geometric pattern of stylised tracery.
The top slab has a Latin blackletter marginal inscription which continues to left and right of the shaft, carved in false relief, as follows:
[obscured by niche blocking] ... M DIE IIIXX SEPTEBIS AD MO CCCCC XLIIII …
ET HELENA BUTLER EI[S?] UXOR …..? ……? CCCCC XX …
HIC JACET DAVID ROTHE ARMIGER QUI
OBIT XXIII DIE AUGUSTI A D 1568
ET ANASTATIA ARCHER EIS UXOR Q OBIT 2
DIE JANUARII A D 1575
[OBSCURED BY NICHE BLOCKING]
UXOR DICTI ROBERTI ROTHE QI OBIT XIII DIE
JULII A D 1589
It translates as: Here lies David Rothe Esquire who Died xxiii day of August Ao d (ni) 1568 and Anastasia Archer his wife who died 2 day January ad 1575
Wife of the said Robert Rothe who died xiii day July Ao d(ni) 1589
Of the month of I day September Ao d(ni) Mo ccci xliiii (1544) and Helena Butler
his wife who died on the feast [day] of St John the Baptist
The chest tomb remains in situ and on display in the N transept.

Compiled by: Cóilín Ó Drisceoil

Date of upload: 23 November 2022

References

Ó Drisceoil, C. 2020 ‘Yet notin is more certaine than death, nor uncertaine, than the houre theirof': excavations in the chantry chapels of St. Mary's church, Kilkenny’, in C. Corlett and M. Potterton (eds.), The Town in Medieval Ireland in the light of recent archaeological excavations, 161-84. Bray. Wordwell.

Ó Drisceoil, C. 2019 Excavations at St. Mary's Church and Church Lane, Kilkenny 12E0314. Unpublished final report for Kilkenny Archaeology.