Building, Foulksrath, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Utility Structures

Building, Foulksrath, Co. Kilkenny

On a slight rise in the floor of the Nore river valley, a set of low stone foundations sits on a natural rock outcrop that lifts it barely half a metre above the surrounding grassland and tillage.

The walls survive only to about forty centimetres in height, yet their plan is still legible: a southern portion with walls roughly 1.5 metres thick at the base, and a northern projection extending about eight metres outward, with entrance gaps still visible in the masonry. What makes these remains genuinely uncertain is not their physical state but their identity. Nobody can say with confidence what this building actually was.

Local tradition holds that the foundations belong to the medieval church of Foulksrath, a reasonable enough claim for a structure sitting on a commanding outcrop with open views in every direction. But the evidence does not settle the matter cleanly. The walls may be medieval in origin, or they may date from the seventeenth century, and a further possibility exists: the Down Survey parish map of Coolerahin, produced between 1655 and 1656, depicts both a house and a separate building in this area, and the foundations could correspond to either of those. The Down Survey was a vast mapping project carried out under William Petty following the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, intended to document landholdings for redistribution, and its parish maps, though schematic, recorded structures that have otherwise left no written trace. Whether these walls predate that survey by centuries or were standing when it was made remains an open question, one that the archaeology alone has not yet resolved.

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