Kells Priory circa 1500: A Fortified Monastic House (original) (raw)

P. Virtuani, T. O'Keeffe: 'Reconstructing Kilmainham: the History and Architecture of the Chief Priory of the Knights Hospitaller in Ireland, c.1170 - 1349'

Journal of Medieval History, 2020

For almost 400 years the Knights of St John of Jerusalem – the Knights Hospitaller – maintained a priory in Kilmainham, Co. Dublin, as their principal residence in Ireland. Nothing survives of it above ground. The priory’s early history and topography are mainly shrouded in mystery, but a fourteenth-century registrum illuminates the workings of its community and the character of its members, and provides the archaeologist with valuable evidence relating to the appearance of its architecture and lay-out when it was at the peak of its prosperity. Yet, the Registrum has never been subjected to detailed scrutiny by archaeologists. Recent research on the Hospitallers in Ireland on the one hand, and on the organization of domestic space in medieval contexts in Ireland on the other, has prompted this first-ever comprehensive appraisal of the evidence in Kilmainham’s Registrum. The Journal Article appeared online on 14 July 2020.

New light on Kelso Abbey

Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland

Archaeological fieldwork on the old garage site on Bridge Street, Kelso, has revealed the extensive and well-preserved remains of buildings associated with the Abbey precinct. A series of large, substantial structures lay immediately to the west of the site of the cloister's west range. Pottery from the site includes stratified examples of an early pink Gritty Ware, similar to that found in early levels at Jedburgh. A rare condiment dish, possibly thirteenth-century in date, was also found. Evidence of copper-based alloy working was also identified. Two principal phases of construction were identified, separated by a major reorganisation and landscaping of the site, in perhaps the late-thirteenth or early-fourteenth century. One of the later buildings is tentatively identified as the monastic granary. There are indications that this part of the precinct was possibly abandoned prior to the Dissolution in the late-sixteenth century. Forming part of the later glebe lands, the area ...

Kilmallock borough and Dominican priory: planning, patronage and urban life in medieval Ireland

Discovery Programme Reports 9, A research Miscellany , 2018

This paper examines the documentary and physical evidence for the origins and early development of the medieval borough of Kilmallock, exploring how it fits within the context of borough planning introduced by the Anglo-Normans in thirteenth-century Ireland. It also takes a look at Kilmallock Dominican priory, looking at its position with regards to the urban space, and placing it in the context of mendicant settlements in Ireland. The architecture and the structural development of the priory are reassessed, as is what it can tell us about piety and patronage in a medieval urban community and its hinterland, but also about Irish mendicant architecture in general, and how the identity of the Dominicans as mendicant friars and their reliance on the generosity of benefactors impacted the structural developments of their churches.

TAP ResearchPaper231-HOLYSTONE PRIORY EXCAVATIONS

Holystone Augustinian Priory and Church of St Mary The Virgin, Northumberland: Archaeological Excavations, 2015-2016, 2016

carried out additional site drawing and illustrative work, with Peter Ryder also contributing his interpretive thoughts and a reconstruction drawing of the site as it may have appeared in the 13th or 14th century.

Kells Priory: The Weaponry

Kells Priory, Co. Kilkenny: Archaeological excavations by T. Fanning & M. Clyne. Miriam Clyne (Dept. of Environment, Heritage and Local Government Archaeological Monographs Series 3), 2007

Changing to Suit the Times, a Post-Dissolution History of Monk Bretton Priory, South Yorkshire

Post-Medieval Archaeology 47/1, 2013

The Dissolution of the Monasteries is usually seen as the fi nal event in the lifecycle of monastic sites, and consequently is often discussed in terms of the destruction wrought or the motivations of those who profi ted immediately from their demise. However, the majority of former monastic sites continued to be occupied, maintained and developed in new ways for decades after these events. This paper takes the case study of Monk Bretton Priory, a fairly unremarkable monastic institution, and attempts to demonstrate how an explicitly biographical and long-term examination of a site's post-Dissolution history can provide a more nuanced and balanced narrative.

St Francis Abbey 1230 – 1630: A History and Archaeology of Kilkenny's Conventual Franciscans in Old Kilkenny Review, no. 68 (2016), pp 5-56

By the early seventeenth century, almost all of the archival and documentary records of the Irish Conventual Franciscans were lost. Additionally, since the Conventuals were, for the most part, confined to the Anglo-Norman parts of Ireland, their friaries were among the first to be dissolved during the sixteenth-century Irish suppression campaign, leading to the dismantlement and reconfiguration of their ecclesiastical precincts. This paucity of written records, and of extant built-fabric, has contributed to the lack of scholarly attention given to the medieval Irish Conventual Franciscans, especially when compared with their Observant confrères. However, the fortuitous survival of primary source materials within various repositories, historically situated at Kilkenny, offers a research path to explore the worlds inhabited by Kilkenny's Conventual Franciscans, present in the town between c. 1230 and 1606. This paper seeks to exploit these sources by presenting a fresh synthesis of the materials, some of which have not been accessed for well in excess of a century, to illuminate the intersecting social, intellectual and physical worlds of Kilkenny's medieval Franciscans. The friars mined a rich vein of urban and rural benefaction throughout their 400 year history in Kilkenny and members of their community rose to the highest echelons of the medieval Irish hierarchy. They were priests and confessors, intellectuals and chroniclers, civil engineers and medical practitioners, who were deeply interested in the world around them. The documentary evidence that they left behind reveals something of their diverse and interesting personalities. Though the Dissolution portended the end of their worlds, the artefactual and documentary evidence suggests that the process was nuanced, and not at all sudden. The Archer chalice, thought lost but relocated in the course of this present research, attests to these nuances. Indeed, the post-Dissolution civic rental documents, detailing the secularisation of the Kilkenny Franciscan medieval precinct, has allowed that same precinct to be virtually reconstructed, further enhancing academic insight into Ireland's Conventual Franciscans and Kilkenny's medieval urban topography.