The Central Access Scheme for the City of Kilkenny
An Bord Pleanála Oral Hearing, December 2008

Statement of Evidence
on behalf of An Taisce and
The Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland
by John Bradley, MA, FSA

 My name is John Bradley. I am an archaeologist and historian and I have spent more
than thirty years studying the medieval city of Kilkenny. My first paper on the
subject, dealing with the town wall of Kilkenny was published in 1975. Since then I
have published research papers in scholarly journals locally, nationally and
internationally. Among the better known of these would be the fascicle of the Irish
Historic Towns Atlas on Kilkenny (2000), which was published by the Royal Irish
Academy as part of the Irish contribution to the series sponsored by the International
Commission for the History of Towns, and which now numbers some 350 historic
towns across Europe. I have also endeavoured to place my knowledge within the
public domain and to that end I have published ‘popular’ books, such as Discover
Kilkenny (2000) and Treasures of Kilkenny (2003). In addition to my research on
Kilkenny, I have also devoted considerable time to the study of medieval Irish towns
generally. This research interest arose from my postgraduate work in the department
of Archaeology at University College Dublin in the 1970s. During the 1980s, under a
commission from the Office of Public Works, I prepared the Urban Archaeology
Survey of towns in twenty-three Irish counties, which endeavoured to identify the
archaeologically sensitive zones in towns, and I have published over twenty papers on
medieval Irish towns, some of which are general studies such as my contribution on
‘Planned Anglo-Norman towns in Ireland’, published in The comparative history of
non-Roman towns in Europe (Oxford, 1985), or my study of the ‘monastic town’
published in Aedificia Nova (Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA, 2008); others are detailed
studies of individual towns such as Drogheda (1978, reprinted 1998) and Ardee
(1984). I have taught in universities since 1991, including University College Dublin
and the National University of Ireland, Galway. At present I am a senior lecturer in
the department of History at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, where I
teach a course on the medieval Irish town—the only one on offer in this country.
I am here today to raise some general issues about the Central Access Scheme, rather
than speak in detail about the archaeology of the route, which has been dealt with by
Cóilín Ó Drisceoil and Ian Doyle. My objections to the route are threefold: (1) the
lack of understanding of the urban structure of Kilkenny, (2) the demolition of the
street pattern of Irishtown and (3) the insertion of an incongruous bridge, which,
cumulatively, destroy the integrity of the historic city. In terms of the historic form of
the city, I have no doubt at all that the decision arrived at from this hearing will be

 one of the most significant in eight hundred years because it will either preserve the
old city for a new generation or destroy it.
From a heritage perspective, the demolition of Dean Street in 1978 was a disaster. It
removed an intact medieval street and it demolished houses, some of which were
themselves medieval, without any archaeological investigation or detailed recording
of the fabric. Such decisions reflect the time, the 1970s, when Inner Relief Roads
were regarded as the solution to traffic problems. From the point of view of heritage,
it was a time of ignorance (I use the word in its original sense meaning ‘lack of
knowledge’) when even such elementary things as the archaeological zone of a town
was not identified or understood. The narrow ambience of Dean Street, which I
remember with affection (my great-aunts lived there), was replaced by the present
mediocre road. To extend this scheme eastwards into Irishtown and Vicar Street, as
proposed, is to perpetuate a decision that should not have been made in the first place
and compound it by adding, literally, insult to injury.
Irishtown is the oldest part of the city, the fons et origo from which Kilkenny
developed. I wish to refute utterly the impression given by the statement of Mr
Thaddeus Breen that ancient Irishtown was confined to a cathedral precinct. This is
not so. Irishtown occupied the whole of the walled area and the River Breagagh has
been its boundary since the time of William Marshall (c.1208). Stanihurst, writing in
1577, tells us that Kilkenny was divided into the Hightown (or Englishtown) and the
Irishtown, which as he quaintly puts it, was ‘the ancienter’ (i.e., the older settlement
of the two). The integral connection of the two was recognised in law by the charter
of Elizabeth I (1574), which created the corporation of Kilkenny by uniting and
making a body corporate of Irishtown and Kilkenny. The union of the two is repeated
in the charter of 1608 and again in the ‘city charter’ of 1609, the governing charter of
Kilkenny until 1843, and the basis on which Kilkenny is permitted to refer to itself as
a city in the Local Government Act of 2001. I give the extract from the first clause of
the 1609 charter, if only to show that the union of Irishtown and Kilkenny is an
ancient one, and that Irishtown’s place as an integral part of the historic city is beyond
question:

 Know ye that we [James I] by our special grace, and of our certain knowledge
and mere motion, do give and grant for us, our heirs and successors, to the said
sovereign, free burgesses, and commonalty, and dwellers or inhabitants of the
said borough or town, and to their successors, or by whatsoever other name they
are called, nominated or known, and by these presents for us, our heirs and
successors, we will, ordain, constitute, and declare that the said town or borough
of Kilkenny, and also all and singular the manors, castles, towns, villages,
hamlets, lands, tenements, waters, rivulets, meadows, bogs and all other
hereditaments whatsoever of, or within the said borough of Kilkenny, as well
within that part thereof called in English the Hightown, alias the English town,
as within that part called the Irishtown, or within the burgageries, franchises,
meares or bounds of them or any of them; and also all and singular, the manors,
castles, towns, villages, hamlets, lands, tenements, waters, rivulets and other
hereditaments whatsoever within the parish and church of St Canice, and within
the several parishes and churches underwritten, the parish and church of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, the parish and church of St John the Evangelist, the parish
and church of St Patrick’s, Kilkenny, within the said borough of Kilkenny, or
within any of them, as well within glebe land and the land of the Cross, as
without, withal may be united and incorporated, and withal may be forever one
entire and free city, and withal shall be nominated, called and named the City of
Kilkenny.
The Irishtown was in existence when the first Anglo-Normans (about 200-strong)
arrived in 1169 and stayed in its ‘ostels’ (guest-houses), as the Song of Dermot and
the earl tells us. I think I was the first to point out, many years ago now, that the
curving line of Dean Street and Vicar Street preserves or reflects the line of an ancient
ecclesiastical enclosure such as we find still surviving at Armagh, Kells (Co. Meath)
and Kildare. This phase of Ireland’s urban development is referred to as ‘the monastic
town’, a phase that also occurs in Britain and the Carolingian world, where
monasteries developed trade, crafts and exchange. In due course the artisans moved
out of the monastery into faubourgs or suburbs, where they could practice their skills
more independently. By the twelfth century, it is normal for such settlements to have
suburbs outside the boundary of the ecclesiastical enclosure. Irishtown, in origin, is
not just some local development it is part of a major process of European

 urbanisation, the first rebirth of urban life that occurred after the fall of the Roman
Empire. The curving street plan should be retained without alteration as one of the
handful of such surviving streets in Ireland, preserving as it does a record in the urban
landscape of this distinctive type of Irish monastic town.
It is perhaps more generally recognised that the urban structure of Hightown (or
Englishtown) fits within an international context. Kilkenny received its first charter in
1207, while, for instance, Lubeck was founded in 1180, Salisbury in 1220, Berlin in
1225. The foundation of the Hightown gave Kilkenny two foci in the classic
continental manner, the cathedral and the castle, linked by the great long High (and
later Parliament) Street. This gave Kilkenny its distinctive linear form, with a vertical
axis, flanked by burgage plots. It is a plan used by the Anglo-Normans throughout
Ireland and found, for instance, at Ardee, Athy, Carrick-on-Suir, Dingle, Kilmallock
and Naas. Kilkenny, however, is Ireland’s most intact large medieval town and the
present scheme proposes to obliterate the oldest part of it by cutting a roadway at right
angles across a plan that has been in place for eight hundred years. It is important to
remember that the plan of Kilkenny did not just emerge from nowhere. Planning and
regulation were quite strict in the Middle Ages. The width of the streets, as well as the
height and proportions of houses were controlled by the corporation and offenders
would have their houses taken down or face substantial penalties for infringements. It
was because of such strict regulation and the encouragement to build stone houses
that Kilkenny became known as ‘the faire [beautiful] citie’. The inherited plan then,
both of Hightown and Irishtown, is one that was carefully planned and we should not
be messing it around without knowing what it is that we are doing. The old city is
attractive to live in for the simple reason that our medieval predecessors put a great
deal of time and attention into making it beautiful.
The proposed bridge is completely out of place in the historic city. Since at least 1223
there have been two bridges across the river Nore—Green’s Bridge and John’s
Bridge. To place a new bridge between these old ones is wrong. It will be visually
intrusive removing the fine view from Michael Street of the spires, churches and
towers from St Canice’s Cathedral to the Castle, that is characteristic of Kilkenny. It
is a view celebrated in the writings of Francis MacManus and compared by Sean J.
White to the approaches to Oxford. Certainly, it is the only urban view in Ireland that

 would bear such a comparison. If we were in Florence or Venice, the construction of
this bridge and its intrusion into the historic core would be unthinkable. And Kilkenny
is to Ireland what Florence is to Italy. It is our great medieval city, our testament to
the fact Ireland was part and parcel of the general urban civilisation of Europe. Time
has not been kind to Ireland’s medieval towns—the seventeenth century was a period
of great destruction, such that many people are surprised to discover that there are any
medieval towns in Ireland. They are few in number and they are precious because of
that. In Italy, as in virtually any other European state, the present problem would be
solved by traffic management and not by the insertion of new roads and bridges.
My objection to this scheme is the manner in which it destroys the historic core and
runs contrary to 1000 years of development that have given Kilkenny its distinctive
character. We should be trying to preserve the integrity of the historic city and
develop Irishtown sensitively rather than demolishing it. The Central Access Scheme
will destroy the street pattern, will add a new road linking Vicar Street with the
proposed bridge and change forever the form and layout of Irishtown, which is the
historic core of Kilkenny. It will introduce an east-west route where there should not
be one and effectively behead St Canice’s Cathedral from the remainder of the
historic city. We should be trying to protect the street pattern and maintain the
underlying urban framework rather than destroying them.
In my opinion the scheme should be rethought and re-routed so as to avoid the
historic city.