Kilkenny Castle, Kilkenny City

Kilkenny Castle is sited on the S side of the city of Kilkenny, on a glaciofluvial terrace of limestone gravels and boulder clay on the south bank of a meander in the river Nore, 12m above the level of the river. The present castle, largely rebuilt in the early 19th century and comprising three wings to the N, W and S, corresponds generally with the Inner Ward of the early 13th-century masonry castle built by William Marshal, earl of Pembroke and lord of Leinster (d. 1219). Between 1207 and 1213 the earl was ‘in exile’ at Kilkenny Castle from the royal court of King John, and this period saw the creation of Kilkenny as the de facto political capital of the lordship of Leinster and, commensurate with its new-found standing in the urban hierarchy, a largescale expansion of the adjoining town (Crouch 2017, 39; Bradley 2000, 2). On the death of William Marshal the elder in 1219 his first son William gained seisin of the castle and town of Kilkenny and four years later he issued an extended charter to the burgesses (McNeill 1931, 71-4; Crouch 2015, 275-6). Following the younger William’s death in 1230 the castle and town were assigned, in succession, to the estates of his four younger brothers, who famously all died without male issue. In the ensuing partition of Leinster in 1247 the castle and town passed to the third son of the younger Isabel Marshal, Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford (Orpen 1920, vol. 3, 325). The de Clares retained the castle until the fourth Earl of Gloucester died in 1314, at which time it descended to the le Despencers, Barons le Despencer, who in 1391 sold their Kilkenny estate to James Butler, the third Earl of Ormond (Carrigan 1905, vol. 2, 171; vol. 3, 49, 51; Curtis 1932, vol. 2, no. 297). The castle was to remain in the Butler family until 1967 when it was sold to the state. The castle is now a National Historic Property in the care of the Office of Public Works.

The historical record is not particularly illuminating regarding the overall plan of the original 13th century masonry castle built by William Marshal. The earliest reference directly linking the earl with the castle is in his 1207 charter to Kilkenny, which refers to ‘the bailiffs of my castle’ and to the provision that ‘no burgess shall have to face a lawsuit in the castle’ (Bradley and Murtagh 2017, 246-7). In 1210 the Marshal quartered King John's enormous army and hosted a 'most lavish reception' for the king at his castle, at the beginning of the king's two-month campaign to restore royal authority over the barons in Ireland (Holden et al 2004, 14258-60). The account of King John at Kilkenny Castle includes a reference to a gate-building at the castle. The only other contemporary record of the Marshal at Kilkenny Castle is contained in the Histoire de Guillaume de Maréchal, which was written shortly after the death of the earl in 1219 and contains an account of its defence in 1208 by his wife Isabel de Clare from a siege by a coalition of his Leinster vassals and Meiler fitz Henry (Holden et al. 2004, vol.2, 13528-13550, 13820-4). Isabel is said to have defended the castle from its 'battlements', perhaps an indication that a masonry castle was in place by this time. The Histoire also includes a reference to the earl describing to King John the arrival of William de Briouze to the ‘walls of my castle’ at Kilkenny earlier in 1210, another possible reference to a stone castle (Holden et al. 2004, 14296).

There are occasional written allusions to individual buildings in the 13th and early 14th century, for example an exchequer is mentioned in 1269 (Sweetman 1877, no. 861), and a prison in 1305, 1308 and 1325 (Sweetman 1877, no. 384; Williams 2007, 52-3, 171n), but the first description of the castle to contain information on its overall plan is the 1307 extent of the estate of Joan countess of Gloucester and Hertford:

‘….the said Joan held in the vill of Kilkenny on the day of her death a castle in which there are a hall, four towers, a chapel, a moat [mota], and other divers houses necessary to the castle, wherefrom nothing can be received a year … there are in that vill 5 ½ acres of lands of demesne, whereof they extend each acre at 12 d. per year; there are also 5 ½ acres of meadow under the castle, which they extend at 20s. per year; and 7 acres of meadow near le Gibbethule, which they extend at 14s. a year, to wit. 2s. each acre; there are also 5 acres of pasture lying in portions, which they extend at 5s. a year. Total 44s. 6d. … There is a garden under the castle, the fruit with the herbage of which they extend at 6s. 8d. a year.’ (Sweetman 1886, no. 653).

The description in the 1307 extent of the original masonry castle as having had ‘four towers’ has been central to all prior interpretations of its plan as a quadrilateral enclosure with corner towers. Various four-sided castle plans have been suggested heretofore, including wedge, square, rectangular, quadrangular and trapezium layouts, and the most recent interpretation by Ben Murtagh has suggested it was of pentagonal plan (Murtagh 2018, 259, 261, fig. 7).

Ben Murtagh's comprehensive study of the Inner Ward of the standing castle, and his archaeological excavations at the site, have revealed a great deal of information about the plan and architecture of the original masonry castle attributed to the elder William Marshal. Surviving standing remains include intermittent stretches of curtain wall between three of the original circular towers, at the NW, SW and SE angles, as well as defensive plunging arrow loops and their round-headed embrasures (Murtagh 1993, 1110-1; 2017, 173-7; 2018, 257-64). Sub-surface structural remains relating to this phase of the castle have also been revealed in excavations, including stretches of curtain wall which had been constructed along the ridge of the rampart for the earlier earth-and-timber castle, two sally-ports, garderobe chutes and medieval floor levels (Murtagh 2018, 291-5). Inside (to the W) of the demolished E curtain wall excavation showed that the ground level was raised by c. 2m above the natural glacial substratum to c. 56.2m OD probably during construction of the Marshal castle by spreading out the redeposited glacial clay of the truncated ramparts of the earlier earth-and-timber castle (E627 and 99E481: Cuttings 19, 25, 26, 27).

Portions of the substantial stone-lined moat that surrounded the castle have been revealed on the S and W sides of the castle. There may not have been a moat on the N, with instead the steep escarpment to the River Nore acting as a 'natural moat'. Excavations by Patrick Neary outside, SW, of the SE tower on The Parade revealed two sections of the curving top of the counterscarp of the S castle moat revetted with a sloping stone wall (top 55.33m OD) at a distance of 10.15m out from the tower (Neary 2010, figure 20, plates 21-4). Ben Murtagh’s excavation (E627:Cutting 16) of the same section of moat, in the angle of the SE tower and the S curtain wall, reached a depth of c. 4.6m (c. 50.7m OD) below the level of the top of the excavated counterscarp (c. 5.5m below present ground level) but the base was apparently not reached (Murtagh 2018, 293, figure 6). The inner (N) edge of the fosse was also revetted by a substantial base-batter which supported the curtain wall above and incorporated a sally-port and garderobe chute outlet. Excavation of the moat in the Rose Garden, outside the W wing, (E627: cutting 10), also revealed a 5.5m thick base-batter incorporating a sally-port (Murtagh 1993, 1111, figure 3). At this location, the bottom of the fosse was revealed at a depth of 6.5m (48.75m OD) below present ground level, i.e. c. 2m below the base as revealed outside the SW curtain. The width of the moat on this side of the castle is unknown.

The missing fourth (E) wing of the castle, which was demolished in the late 18th-century, originally housed the main gate-building of the castle. Archaeological excavations (15E590)