‘Always been a bit of a mystery’ - Discovery of lost medieval Kilkenny village may be within reach

Most of us in Kilkenny will have spent many a sunny day on the grounds of the Castle Park at Dukesmeadows; but few will have been aware of the possible presence of a lost medieval village beneath the soil.

New light may well be shed on the centuries-old mystery however, as a search is taking place this week for the village of Flemingstown, a purpose-built settlement in the castle’s outer wards which was home to an immigrant community of artisans from what is now modern-day Belgium.

The settlement was built by the Archduke of Pembroke, William Marshall, in the early thirteenth century, to house skilled Flemish industrialists, brewers and textile workers with a notable family originally from the region being the Kytelers, but the precise location of where the remains of Flemingstown lie has long been forgotten.

“There’s always been a bit of a mystery about exactly where the town was,” says Cóilín Ó Drisceoil, Archaeologist with the National Monument Service who’s been involved in years’ worth of research on Kilkenny heritage.

“It was abandoned partly in the 15th century, there were some scant remains of it around in the 17th century and then the whole place was lost; it just disappeared. It was never mapped or anything so we’ve been searching for it for many years,” he adds.

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The current survey of the grounds is being conducted with the national archaeological research institute, the Discovery Programme in conjunction with the National Monument Service and OPW in Kilkenny Castle with funding from the Castle Studies Trust, a UK-based castle research organisation.

The research consists of a geographical study which maps the underground terrain using state of the art technology and preliminary scans came through on Wednesday afternoon.

Although the results gathered so far still need further investigation in order to be confirmed, Cóilín is confident that the ancient settlement of Flemingstown is about to finally be located.

“We’ve got absolutely fantastic results,” he outlines. “We can clearly see the main street of Flemingstown. We can see the houses and the wall that ran around and now we’re able to map in considerable detail exactly where it is precisely.”

If subsequent data analysis confirms these suspicions that the structures located are indeed the remains of Flemingstown, the significance of the discovery will be unlike anything else in the country.

“This is a unique example of a purpose-built settlement for a medieval castle in Ireland,” Cóilín explains.

“There’s nothing like this. There’s no other towns that were purpose-built for Flemish artisans and the like in Ireland, so it’s unique in that sense,” he concludes.

Photo: An archaeologist from The Discovery Programme undertaking geophysical survey using a magnetometer. Photo: The Discovery Programme: Centre for Archaeology and Innovation Ireland

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