Excavations in the Chantry Chapels at St Mary’s, Kilkenny
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Online lecture
The Annual All Hallows Lecture 2025, brought to you by the Church Monuments Society.
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Full title: ‘Yet Nothing is more certaine than death, nor more uncertaine, than the houre theirof…’: Excavations in the Chantry Chapels at St Mary’s, Kilkenny
By Cóilín Ó Drisceoil
Excavations between 2015-17 for the conversion of one of Ireland’s largest medieval parish churches at St Mary’s, Kilkenny into a museum, revealed an extraordinary archaeological palimpsest of funerary monuments, burials and vaults beneath the floors. This talk for the CMS will focus on the important new information the excavation provides on the original context and setting of the well-known monuments of the Catholic merchant élite, who, unlike in much of Ireland and Britain, continued to construct and used chantry chapels for many decades following the reformation.
Cóilín Ó Drisceoil is a state archaeologist with the National Monuments Service. He has published extensively on medieval urban archaeology and funerary monuments in Ireland and between 2015-17 he led extensive archaeological excavations in the medieval parish church of St Mary’s, Kilkenny, in advance of its conversion into the Medieval Mile Museum. His books include: (with John Bradley and Michael Potterton), William Marshal and Ireland (Four Courts Press, 2017); Materialising Power: The Archaeology of the Black Pig’s Dyke (Wordwell, 2021) and Highhays, Kilkenny: A Medieval Pottery Production Centre in South-East Ireland (Oxbow Books, 2022).
