Known as the Hospital of Our Blessed Saviour, the institution was established by Royal Charter in May 1631, the term 'hospital' here carrying its older meaning of a place of hospitality and refuge rather than a medical facility. By 1783, records describe a 'Poorhouse called a "hospital"' that had recently been repaired and was housing eight widows along with their families. It stood on No. 4 High Street for over two centuries before its residents were transferred, around 1839, to a new Ormonde Almshouse on Barrack Street. The original building was demolished in 1841, though original fabric may yet survive within the bank's basement level.

The story deepened considerably when excavations were carried out ahead of the construction of a multi-storey carpark and leisure centre on the north side of Ormonde Street. Led by archaeologist Judith Carroll in the late 1990s, the dig explored a long rear plot associated with the almshouse, a strip of land that stretched some 130 metres westward from Pudding Lane all the way to the town wall. The probable boundary of this plot can be traced on John Rocque's 1758 map of Kilkenny, which shows a northern limit at Kellys Lane. Within this area, Carroll's team uncovered six human skeletal burials, two positioned roughly 30 metres west of the almshouse and four more at the far end of the plot near the town wall. Their orientations varied: the pair closer to the building lay east to west, heads to the west, in the manner typical of Christian burial, while three of the rearmost burials lay north to south and one east to west. Disarticulated partial remains of an adult female were also recovered from a nearby post-medieval pit. No firm dates were established for the burials, but their location strongly suggests an association with the almshouse. Extensive pitting, gullies, and the slots left by earth-fast sill-beam structures, the kind of simple framing where upright timbers are set directly into the ground rather than onto stone footings, were also identified across the excavated area. Crucially, the dig stopped at the formation level of the carpark development, meaning significant archaeological features remain undisturbed beneath the present structure.