Rock of Cashel
— the silhouette you see before you see the town.
Not only on a wall.
“A limestone outcrop rising above the Plain of Tipperary. You see it long before you reach the town: round tower, cathedral, the small dark shape of Cormac's Chapel on the south side. The Kings of Munster ruled from this rock before they gave it to the Church in 1101. The stones have been there ever since, mostly without a roof. The light moves across the limestone differently than it moves across the fields below. Sheep graze around Hore Abbey in the meadow. From the wall at the edge, the Galtee Mountains sit on the southern horizon.
Rock of Cashel, 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.
The Rock of Cashel rises about 60 metres above the surrounding Plain of Tipperary in County Tipperary, in the Irish province of Munster. The limestone outcrop sits at the edge of the town of Cashel, roughly 160 km southwest of Dublin and about 100 km north of Cork. The site was the traditional seat of the Kings of Munster for several centuries until King Muirchertach Ua Briain granted the rock to the Church in 1101. The principal buildings still standing include the round tower, Cormac's Chapel, the Gothic cathedral, and the Hall of the Vicars Choral, all raised between the early twelfth and fifteenth centuries. The site is now a National Monument cared for by the Office of Public Works.
Cormac's Chapel, consecrated in 1134, is one of the earliest and finest Romanesque churches in Ireland. King Cormac Mac Carthaigh commissioned it, and its interior still carries traces of twelfth-century frescoes, among the oldest surviving wall paintings in the country. The round tower, the oldest building on the rock, dates from around 1100 and rises about 28 metres. The Gothic cathedral was built between 1235 and 1270 and was burned in 1495 by Gerald FitzGerald, the eighth Earl of Kildare. Cromwellian forces under Murrough O'Brien sacked the rock in 1647, and Archbishop Arthur Price had the cathedral roof removed in 1749. The buildings have stood roofless above the plain ever since.
The Rock of Cashel is open year-round. Hours run roughly 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in winter and to 7 p.m. in summer; last admission is forty-five minutes before closing. The Office of Public Works charges a modest admission fee, with reduced rates for seniors, students, and children. Cormac's Chapel is shown by guided tour only, in small groups, to protect the surviving twelfth-century frescoes from humidity damage. Hore Abbey, a thirteenth-century Cistercian ruin in the meadow at the foot of the rock, is freely accessible and worth the short walk down through the gate at the lower car park.