Kilkenny Castle
— — eight centuries leaning into the bend of the Nore.
Not only on a wall.
“A Norman castle on a high bend of the River Nore, built in 1195 and held by the Butler family for nearly six hundred years. In 1967 the sixth Marquess of Ormonde sold it to the people of Kilkenny for fifty pounds, and the town has run it since. Three of the original four corner towers still stand. Inside, the Long Gallery is the surprise — a hammerbeam roof painted with Celtic figures, and a row of family portraits the building seems to have grown around. The grounds run down to the river, fifty acres of lawn and beech.
Kilkenny Castle, 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.
Kilkenny Castle stands on the eastern bank of the River Nore in Kilkenny, a medieval city in the southeast of Ireland, about 120 kilometres south of Dublin. The first stone castle on the site was raised in 1195 by William Marshal, the Anglo-Norman lord who took over his father-in-law Strongbow's earlier wooden fortification, to control the fording-point of the river and the junction of the routeways into Munster and Leinster. The castle's footprint is a slightly compressed quadrangle; three of the original four drum towers remain after Cromwellian siege damage in 1650. The 50-acre grounds open onto The Parade and form the south anchor of the city's Medieval Mile.
The castle's masonry is local Kilkenny limestone, the dark Carboniferous stone behind the city's nickname, the Marble City, and the same material as the nearby St Canice's Cathedral. The four-sided plan dates to the 13th century; the western wing was rebuilt in the 19th century by William Robertson, who reworked the medieval shell in a sober Tudor-Revival style for the Butler family. The Long Gallery, refitted in the 1860s by Thomas Newenham Deane, runs almost the full length of the east wing and is crowned by a hammerbeam roof painted by John Hungerford Pollen with Celtic and pre-Raphaelite figures.
The castle is owned by the Office of Public Works and open daily for most of the calendar, with reduced winter hours and closures around Christmas. The Picture Gallery, the State Rooms, and the basement kitchens are seen on a guided tour; the gardens and parkland are free to enter from dawn to dusk. Adult admission to the interior runs around eight euros; concessions and the OPW Heritage Card are accepted. The castle sits at the southern end of the Medieval Mile, a few minutes' walk from St Canice's Cathedral and the Black Abbey.