Kilkenny Archaeological Society to host lecture on Jerpoint Cloister
A lecture by a leading archaeologist and historian on The The Jerpoint Abbey Cloister will be held at Rothe House later this month.
The talk, The Jerpoint Abbey Cloister – Unravelling a Sculptural Masterpiece by Christiaan Corlett will take place on February, 21 at 8pm.
Not long after the dissolution of the monasteries, the cloister at Jerpoint was torn down and its various components cast aside or strewn far and wide. What we see today is an imperfect reconstruction from 1956 Despite this, it is generally agreed that the cloister at Jerpoint was the most ornamental example ever constructed and sculpted in late medieval Ireland.
But what did it originally look like, and why and when was it constructed?
Chris Corlett is an archaeologist with the National Monuments Service, with responsibility for
monuments in State Care in Kilkenny and the south east will explore these questions in the upcoming lecture. He is interested in and has written extensively on all things archaeological and has published widely on archaeology and history,
including the Old Kilkenny Review.