2011:383 - THE ROBING ROOM, BISHOP’S PALACE, CHURCH LANE, KILKENNY, Kilkenny

At the request of the Heritage Council, a building recording and excavation project was undertaken in April–May 2011 at the Robing Room, Church Lane, Kilkenny. The Robing Room is a little-known neo-classical garden pavilion situated amongst a suite of medieval and early modern ecclesiastical buildings in the Close of St Canice’s Cathedral. It is located within the grounds of the former episcopal palace of the diocese of Ossory, now the headquarters of the Heritage Council, and is considered to have been built around 1758 as a component of an elaborate processional colonnade that linked with the entrance to the north transept of the cathedral, 25m to the south. As part of a wider conservation scheme for the historic environment of the Heritage Council’s headquarters, repairs to the Robing Room commenced in 2010 and will continue into 2012. Kilkenny Archaeology was commissioned by the Heritage Council to employ archaeological techniques to study the building with a view to gaining a better understanding of its architectural history and its immediate archaeological context. Limited excavation comprised a single cutting outside the entrance to the Robing Room and two small cuttings into the cobbled floor of the building’s semi-basement.

Though rather limited in its extent, this project has nevertheless provided new evidence for the changing pattern of medieval land use in the northern sector of the Cathedral Close, as well as clarifying the chronology, function and evolution of the Robing Room. The earliest activity was represented by a single pit that contained waste from antler- and bone-working, probably from a nearby composite comb-making workshop. One of the antler tines was radiocarbon-dated to cal. AD 990–1155 (Beta-306021). This craftworking was taking place just inside the sanctior boundary, a remnant of which was identified in the cutting as a distinctive orange redeposited subsoil. To judge by previous finds, antler-working appears to have been quite significant within the cathedral precinct prior to the Anglo-Norman conquest.

As a consequence of scarping of the ground in advance of the construction of the first phase of the Robing Room, no Anglo-Norman archaeology was encountered (apart from a 13th/14th-century grave-slab that had been recycled as a step). There was no evidence whatsoever that would link the Robing Room with the medieval town wall, and its circuit can now be said to have extended further to the north. Sometime around 1740, and probably during the bishopric of either Charles Este (1735–40) or Michael Cox (1743–54), a small, rectangular summer-house with a semi-basement store was built into the then recently completed episcopal precinct wall. Some few years after the building was finished, its ground floor was demolished and replaced with the ovoid neo-classical pavilion to be seen today. This cannot be attributed with certainty to Bishop Richard Pococke but the evidence points in his direction for two chief reasons. First, the new building included a connection to the colonnade, which Pococke had built around 1758; second, the industrial entrepreneur William Colles designed and executed the colonnade, and stone from his marble mill was used in the Robing Room. Pococke is the only one of the mid-18th-century bishops who is known to have had strong links with Colles. As to the use of the building, no evidence was found that it was actually ever employed as a robing room—the first mention of this in print occurs in 1963. Instead, an account from 1775 specifically refers to it as a ‘summer-house’. This formed an integral part of a Georgian garden layout, a designed landscape and vista that was created around the palace.

No. 383. The Robing Room, Bishop’s Palace, Church Lane, Kilkenny: excavation in progress.

Kilkenny Archaeology, Threecastles, Co. Kilkenny