Building Ros lecture at Kilkenny Castle explores the Norman town's design

Tonight Kilkenny Castle hosts a lecture titled Building Ros: From the old Walling of Ros to the new Norman Garden

The speaker is Mr. Eamonn Hore Director of Services for Wexford County Council, covering Roads and Transportation, Water Services, Health and Safety and New Ross Municipal District. Eamon studied Civil Engineering at University College Dublin and is a Fellow of the Institute of Engineers Ireland. He has a keen interest in history generally and all things Wexford and New Ross in particular.

Inspired by the recent opening of the High Hill Norman Garden in early October 2022, Eamonn  will deliver the 3rd instalment of the Autumn Lecture Series to reflect on this vital addition to the town in the context of its medieval history.

The earliest settlement at New Ross or Ros Mhic Thriúin in Irish, dates back to the monastery established in Irishtown by St Abban in the 6th century. The Earl of Pembroke, William Marshal, and his Wife Isabella de Clare, Strongbow's daughter, developed the Norman town and port at the end of the 12th century.

Kilkenny Civil War compensation claims ranged from cows to chocolate to cars - see list!

The bustling Norman town  was unusual in Ireland in that it had no protective wall  for the first sixty years of its existence. Leinster’s chief Gaelic family, ruled in large parts of the surrounding countryside, and protected their kinsman William Marshal’s town. William and his sons rewarded the MacMurroughs keeping potential marauders at bay and Ros was permitted to thrive.  

However, Walter de Burgh (Burke) intent on subduing Maurice Fitzgerald, began to lay waste to areas of Geraldine territory, which in this case included Ros.

The burning of Woodstock House in Kilkenny 100 years ago

How Woodstock House ruins stand as a 'monument to turbulent times'

A 13th century poem describing the event was written in old French by an unknown 'trouvere' and a copy is kept in the New Ross library to this day. The burgers of the town, unused to having their streets reduced to a battlefield, decided to throw a fosse and wall around the town to keep out the troublesome Norman knights. Hired help was slow, so the townspeople, guild by guild, decided to dig out a vast  ditch of twenty feet in width for a kilometre and a half around the town. 

All sixteen guilds took part and on Sundays the ladies of the town took over the work. It took the effort of sixteen occupational guilds to dig a mighty trench over a mile surrounding the town, and the soil was drawn inward to build a garden – not unlike the High Hill. The Walling of Ros panel in the Ros Tapestry presents the Norman cultivation and development of Leinster as well as  the construction of this protective wall and a trench around the town.

The curved section of the fosse/wall is 1,575 metres long and runs from the river, heading west up Lower and Upper William Street towards Three Bullet Gate. From there it turned North along Town Wall and Nunnery Lane to Fair Gate/Maiden Gate before heading Northwest to College Road and then turning west along Goat Hill back to the river. The town's defences were eventually  dismantled by Cromwell's troops in 1649.

This lecture series is delivered by New Ross Needlecraft Ltd (Board of the Ros Tapestry) in partnership with the OPW in Kilkenny Castle.