Jerpoint Abbey
— the company the cloister still keeps.
Not only on a wall.
“A Cistercian house in the valley of the Nore, south of Thomastown. The white monks who built it in 1180 are long gone; the cloister arcade is not. Saints, knights, ladies, and ecclesiastics still stand carved in the columns where the brothers once walked the daily round. The crossing tower came later, in the fifteenth century, set against the original Romanesque east end. Henry VIII closed the house in 1540. The stone has kept the rest. Best in late light, when the carved figures throw shadows across the garth and the limestone reads almost gold.
Jerpoint Abbey, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Jerpoint Abbey stands about 2.5 kilometres south of Thomastown in County Kilkenny, in the valley of the River Nore. It was founded around 1180 as a Cistercian house under the patronage of Donnchadh Mac Gilla Pátraic, King of Osraige. The community was a daughter house of Baltinglass Abbey in County Wicklow, which in turn descended from Mellifont, the first Cistercian foundation in Ireland. The white monks held the site for three and a half centuries, until Henry VIII's suppression of the monasteries reached Ireland in 1540 and the lands passed to the Earl of Ormond. The ruins are managed today by the Office of Public Works as a national monument, with seasonal access and a small visitor centre at the gate.
The Cistercian rule generally forbade decorative sculpture, which makes the carved cloister at Jerpoint a quiet rebellion. The arcade, partially reconstructed in the mid-twentieth century from surviving fragments and dated to the late medieval period, carries paired columns whose shafts depict full-length figures: bishops with crosiers, armoured knights, abbots, and courtly couples. Some are identified by their attributes; many remain anonymous. The crossing tower, added in roughly the same period, replaces an earlier low Romanesque lantern, and the east end of the church retains its original twelfth-century lancets, the oldest stonework on the site. Limestone throughout, weathered to a soft grey-gold.
The site is in the care of the Office of Public Works and opens to visitors from early March through late November, with reduced hours at the shoulders of the season. A modest admission fee applies, free to holders of an OPW Heritage Card. The visitor centre at the gate holds carved stone fragments and a small collection of medieval grave slabs from the church and chapter house. Inside the church itself, the tomb of Bishop Felix O'Dulany of Ossory, who died in 1202, is the earliest named monument on the site. Parking is on site. Allow ninety minutes for the church, the cloister, and the chapter house.