URBAN EXPRESSION

All Types And Styles Of Urban Expression

july

THE RIVERSIDE GARDEN – ABBEY QUARTER PROJECT KILKENNY

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THE RIVERSIDE GARDEN – ABBEY QUARTER PROJECT KILKENNY

Kilkenny’s new Riverside Garden and Skatepark opened to the public in June 2021 however the skatepark has been operational since the beginning of May and has proved to be very popular. While the Riverside Garden project provides a significant extension to the riverside walkways through the city, plans to extend this further to provide connectivity under Greens Bridge, connecting with the Linear Park at Bishops Meadows/Riverside Drive are also currently being progressed with funding from the Urban Regeneration and Development Fund.

The Abbey Quarter, site of the former Smithwick’s Brewery, is a strategic city centre site located on the banks of the river Nore in the heart of Kilkenny City. The 300 year old brewery was closed by Diageo in 2013. Kilkenny County Council then purchased the site and produced a detailed masterplan for the brewery site and adjacent lands, totalling about 20 acres. With St Francis Abbey at its core, this regeneration project aims to create an attractive, well-designed urban quarter with a mix of uses. These include commercial, residential, enterprise development, recreational and community.

The masterplan’s vision is to develop the Abbey Quarter as a seamless complement to the medieval city. It envisages the quarter being an inclusive place for an inter-generational community to work, live and play. The masterplan supports objectives in the Government’s National Planning Framework such as compact growth; enhanced regional accessibility; sustainable mobility; a strong economy, supported by enterprise, innovation and skills; and enhanced amenities and heritage.

The project links the old and the new. A brownfield site (a disused site envisaged for redevelopment) will be transformed through new buildings and the re-use of old buildings. Certain empty spaces will be converted into public spaces. The regenerated area will enhance the city’s Medieval Mile.

The Government has given approval in principal to provide €6.15 million through its Urban Regeneration Development Fund (URDF) to fund significant public realm areas (that is, areas that the public can access) and community and cultural infrastructure projects in the Abbey Quarter. The funding allocation is 75% of the total cost of these works. These include:

a riverside park
a two and half acre urban park around St Francis Abbey
other community and cultural infrastructure, including a public library in the Mayfair building.
The public spaces and parks will become a backdrop to Kilkenny’s many outdoor festivals.

ST. JOHN’S GRAVEYARD DUBLIN ROAD KILKENNY – OLD CHURCHYARD

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ST. JOHN’S GRAVEYARD DUBLIN ROAD KILKENNY – OLD CHURCHYARD

This old churchyard is known as St. John’s and it is located on Dublin Road not far from Kilkenny railway station. I visited this graveyard a number of times in the past but the weather has always been bad and the light was usually poor. This year things were much better however my camera-lens combination was giving problems.

https://historicgraves.com/graveyard/st-john-s/kk-stjh

The colour of the gravestones is different to what I normally see in Irish graveyards [orange/brown rather than grey/white ].

The graveyard is very open and there many signs of anti-social behaviour but on balance I would guess that much of the decline and decay of the graves is natural rather than as a result of vandalism. In some cases the collapse of gravestones and monuments may be as a result of poor workmanship or poor quality materials. I suppose the dead are not in a position to complain.

Is is described as being “a picturesque graveyard forming an appealing feature in the streetscape on the road leading out of Kilkenny to the south-east. Having origins in a fourteenth-century leper hospital the grounds are of special significance as the location of a seventeenth-century Catholic chapel, thereby representing an early ecclesiastical site in the locality: furthermore it is believed that fragments survive spanning the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, thereby emphasising the archaeological importance of the site. The graveyard remains of additional importance for the associations with a number of Kilkenny’s foremost dignitaries or personalities while a collection of cut-stone markers displaying expert stone masonry identify the considerable artistic design.”

BISHOPS MEADOWS RIVER WALK – RIVER NORE LINEAR PARK

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BISHOPS MEADOWS RIVER WALK – RIVER NORE LINEAR PARK

This visit I was better prepared for the canal and river walks in Kilkenny. I also brought proper rain gear but it did not rain except for a twenty minute thunder storm.

I wakened up early on the first morning and as the weather was beautiful and because rain had been forecasted for the rest of week I decided that I should immediately visit Bishops Meadows Walk but this timed I returned to the city centre via Freshford Road.

On day two of my visit to Kilkenny in 2018 [my last visit to the city] I walked more than twenty miles over three sessions and I was exhausted because the weather was very hot even though the sky was overcast. At the end of the day my feet were in a very poor condition. I asked a local farmer how long Bishopsmeadows walk was and he responded by saying six fields. Having seen some really large fields on my way to Kilkenny by train I was afraid that this could be six miles but I assumed that it would be no more than two miles assuming about four fields per mile. I later discovered that it is 2.6km but of course the return journey was also the same distance [I often forget about the return journey].