Medieval Mile Museum

The museum occupies Saint Mary's, a parish church founded around 1200 for the Anglo-Norman burgesses of Kilkenny, which was converted with a glass and steel insertion completed in 2017. What it holds is the reason to go: the largest collection of carved medieval and Renaissance tombs in situ anywhere in Ireland, mostly of Kilkenny merchant families, worked in the local black limestone by the Kilkenny school of carvers who dominated Irish funerary sculpture in the sixteenth century. Figures in period dress, weepers, heraldry and inscriptions in Latin and Norman French are all present and legible. The building also displays civic material - the city's charters, the Liber Primus Kilkenniensis, and archaeological finds - and covers the darker episodes, including the 1324 trial of Alice Kyteler for witchcraft, the first such case in Ireland, whose servant Petronilla was burned. The Medieval Mile walking route runs past the door.

History

St. Mary's Church was built in 1202, close to Kilkenny Castle, in the early years of Norman rule over the town, and by 1205 it was already holding an ecclesiastical court; its tower was added in 1343. The church was deconsecrated in 1957 and has housed the Medieval Mile Museum since 2017 (Wikipedia, St. Mary's Church, Kilkenny).

What's there

• The tomb collection - the largest set of carved medieval tombs in situ in Ireland.
• The Kilkenny carvers - sixteenth-century black limestone work by the local school.
• The civic records - charters and the Liber Primus Kilkenniensis.
• The Kyteler case - Ireland's first witchcraft trial, in 1324.

When to go

Any season; indoors. Reduced hours in winter. One to two hours covers it. It sits on the Medieval Mile between the castle and Saint Canice's.

Practical notes

Ticketed, and a separate charge from the castle and Saint Canice's - the three together add up. The modern insertion into the church divides opinion. Some visitors find the tomb focus narrow.

Nearby

Kilkenny Castle is south along the Medieval Mile; Saint Canice's Cathedral is north.

Key facts