Architectural fragment, Kilkenny, Co. Westmeath

Co. Westmeath |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Architectural fragment, Kilkenny, Co. Westmeath

Around a holy well in Kilkenny townland in County Westmeath, something quietly extraordinary has accumulated over the centuries.

St. Kenny's Well, dedicated to St. Canice, sits within a roughly D-shaped grove of trees and bushes on low-lying, poorly drained ground. Arranged around its perimeter is a loose assembly of carved stonework, gathered from two nearby medieval sites and placed to form a series of devotional stations. The effect is less a curated display than an organic accumulation of salvage, each piece carrying the trace of a building that no longer stands.

The fragments come primarily from two sources: a medieval church and graveyard about 240 metres to the south-west, and an abbey some 260 metres to the south-south-west that once belonged to the Fratres Cruciferi, or Crouched Friars, a mendicant order whose Irish houses were modest in number and whose presence here has otherwise been entirely erased. A large octagonal font lies on the ground to the north of the well, its origin uncertain between the two sites. To the west, a hexagonal stone base, the kind used to support a cross or font, now holds a stone cross that may originally have served as a finial on the medieval church roof. A V-shaped fragment lying to the south-east bears a carving of a winged angel; it once formed the apex of a niche or hood moulding, the decorative arched framing above a doorway or statue. To the north-north-east, a substantial piece of cut stone has been identified as a column capital, the carved top section where a column meets the ribs of a vaulted ceiling, almost certainly from the vanished abbey. A post-medieval fleur-de-lys cross, its socket still designed to receive a metal cross, stands to the south-east of the well. A stone corbel carved with an angel was recorded at the site in the late 1970s but could not be located during more recent survey work, adding a further layer of mystery to an already fragmentary picture.

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