New technologies lets researchers retrace a lost Kilkenny town  without having to lift a spade

Today there is little trace of the medieval market town of Newtown left visible to the naked eye. Only some scattered ruins within the green fields beside Jerpoint Abbey, Co. Kilkenny, give a hint today of what was once a busy town. The Lost Town of Newtown Jerpoint was founded by either Earl Marshal or Griffin Fitzwilliam in the 12th century, just west of the Cistercian Abbey, where the main crossing of the River Nore was formed by a toll paying bridge. The town was abandoned sometime early in the 18th century.

It is a unique historical place and the presence of the remains of St Nicholas, the patron saint of generosity and philanthropy only adds to its importance. That it remains intact is largely due to the fact that it was not built on in subsequent generations.  

Now research by Daniel O'Mahony, a Teagasc Walsh Scholar at the UCD School of Archaeology and Dr Jesko Zimmermann a Data Technologist in the Agrifood Business and Spatial Analysis Department at Teagasc has revealed what the historic town may have looked like when it was occupied. 

Although noted in the historic Ordnance Survey Ireland maps of 1842, the footprint of the former town is now agricultural land. According to local legend, and an entry on the OSI map, the local church is also the resting place of St. Nicholas, whose remains were allegedly brought to Kilkenny by Cistercian monks.

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St Nicholas was venerated in both the Catholic and Orhodox churches and is a prominent figure in ancient Celtic Christianity. He died in Myrna in Turkey in 343AD and the Normans, travelling through the region during the Crusades, took his remains back to Barri, then Venice and eventually Jerpoint. Such saintly relics and remains were believed to confer immense status on monasteries. Jerpoint Park also contains the tomb of a local parish priest from the 14th century, the ruins of a church and evidence of an ancient bridge.  

As part of his Teagasc Walsh Scholarship, Daniel O’Mahony has been exploring historical monuments on agricultural land using advanced new technologies. Using LIDAR and magnetic gradiometry, Daniel has retraced the old buildings of Newtown without having to ever lift a spade or dig. His research has unearthed long lost features such as ridge and furrow, two large mill complexes, possible land drainage, domestic homes and animal enclosures in Newtown.

Known as Laser Scanning or 3D scanning, LIDAR is a remote sensing technology which uses laser beams to explore faraway objects. One of the most common uses is to make high resolution terrain models. Due to its high precision nature, LIDAR can be used to both map and penetrate vegetation, providing amazing insight into features otherwise usually hidden. In archaeology, this allows  researchers to pick up the traces left by humans on the landscape without the need for excavation.

LIDAR provides a vivid image of how the village of Newtown may have actually looked: the main road of Newtown, known as the Long Street, appears with the remnants of dwellings on either side. These houses facing the road, had  long gardens stretching towards the river in the east, and into the fields in the west.

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Another technology used in the research was a magnetometer survey, a non-invasive scanning method which can detect magnetic irregularities below ground which suggests buried buildings, and remnants of human settlement.

The UCD School of Archaeology carried out magnetic gradiometry of the area in 2021 (using a SENSYS Magneto MX V3 magnetometer). These reveal what may have been a larger mill complex in the south east of the village, on the banks of the river. The main building is still visible in the LIDAR imagery as a square feature, as are other traces of a wider milling area. 

To the west of the town are the ruins of the parish church. Already in ruins when the area was first mapped by the OSI, the old church ground is the site of a local legend: a decorative tomb in the graveyard supposedly being the final resting place of one St. Nicholas, the patron saint of church. The origin of this myth can be traced to the mapping of the area for the first Ordnance Survey of 1839 as the surveyors of the day inserted a label, 'St. Nicholas’ Tomb’, near the location of the church.

Recently this has been disputed as a team of archaeologists now claim that they have found St. Nicholas' tomb underneath a byzantine church in Turkey. Whether he lies at Newtown or not, the new research offers a unique glimpse into the remnants of a truly ancient place.  

The mapping of the town is now the subject of a fascinating Brainstorm podcast on RTE . To listen visit https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2022/0118/1274278-newtown-kilkenny-ireland-medieval-town/