Graveyard, Threecastles, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Burial Grounds
A medieval church with a residential tower attached, overlooking a ford on the River Nore, and a graveyard whose oldest stone fragments may date back seven centuries: the site at Threecastles in County Kilkenny is not simply a ruin but a place where several layers of early Irish life remain legible in the landscape.
The graveyard itself is roughly rectangular, tapering slightly toward its southern end, and measures around 55 metres north to south. The church and its tower occupy the northern portion, the tower being what is sometimes called a residential tower, meaning it served a domestic or defensive function alongside its ecclesiastical setting, a combination that was not unusual in medieval Ireland but always worth pausing over.
The ridge on which the site sits runs east to west along the southern bank of the Nore, and even the slight elevation is enough to give a wide view across the valley and, critically, over the fording point of the river below. Control of a ford mattered enormously in medieval Ireland, and a church with a residential tower positioned above one suggests the site carried both spiritual and strategic significance. The graveslab fragments found within the enclosure span a considerable range of time. The historian Carrigan, writing in 1905, recorded one fragment dating to around 1600. Buggy, writing in 1969, noted several further fragments, one of which may belong to the 13th or 14th century, making it potentially among the earlier material evidence on the site. Grave slabs of this period were typically flat, inscribed stones laid over a burial, sometimes carved with foliate or geometric designs, and their survival even in fragments is relatively uncommon.