Rothe House

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Rothe House Museum & Garden
Rothe House, 1998.jpg
Facade of the Rothe House
Data
place Kilkenny , Co. Kilkenny, Ireland Coordinates: 52 ° 39 ′ 15.7 "  N , 7 ° 15 ′ 17"  WWorld icon
opening 1962
operator
Rothe House Trust
management
Patricia Duffe (as of 2018)
Website

The Rothe House is a residential and commercial building in the city of Kilkenny in Ireland that the draper John Rothe Fitzpiers in Tudor style was built. The complex consists of three limestone houses, one behind the other, with three courtyards and a half-acre garden laid out in the late medieval / early renaissance style. The building is open to the public as a museum ( Rothe House Museum & Garden ). It can be explored in a self-guided visit; Guided tours can be booked from groups of 10 people.

history

Norman settlement up to the Tudor period

In the early 13th century, William Marshall laid the plots along the High Street as burgage plots (a possible translation would be "citizen parcels "). The properties went from the High Street and reached on one side to the city wall, on the other side of the street to the River Nore or today's St. Kieran Street. The property on which the Rothe House Museum & Garden is now located then belonged to Cistercian monks in Duiske Abbey in Graiguenamanagh, southeast of Kilkenny. The abbot's townhouse was at this point at the time. A 700-year-old rubbish pit discovered during archaeological digs contained swan bones, wine bottles from France and a belt buckle . After the abolition of the monasteries in the 16th century, the property fell to the Earls of Ormonde, who resided in Kilkenny Castle .

16th and 17th centuries

Coat of arms of the Rothe family on the facade of the 3rd house with the year 1610

The wealthy citizen John Rothe had the first house built for his young family in 1594. The Rothe family was one of the ten to fifteen wealthiest and most politically important families in Kilkenny at the time. Members of the family were eighteen times mayors of the city between 1440 and 1544. Before that, John Rothe had lived on Back Lane (now Kieran Street) with his wife, Rose Archer. Architecturally, his new family home followed the structure of the Archer estate built in 1582 (today the Hole in the Wall pub is located there) with three houses one behind the other with courtyards in between instead of a series of extensions. His business premises were housed in the arcade rooms on the ground floor, while the family presumably resided on the upper floor. In 1604 he had the second house built, and in 1610 the third house followed.

Third house, seen from the second courtyard

The kitchen was housed in the third house, which is still evident today from the huge fireplace. Behind the third house, the garden was laid out after 1601 (earliest coin finds date from 1601–1602), in the first part of which vegetables for daily use were grown and in the second part an orchard was laid out. Archaeological investigations between 2005 and 2007 produced traces of pollen from which the historical varieties could be derived. John Rothe died in 1620 and left an extensive will from which the family's belongings can still be deduced. He is buried in the former St. Mary's Church, which is now the Medieval Mile Museum. He bequeathed the house to his son Peter, who continued the business in the first house. It is possible that during the Confederation of Ireland 1642–1648 parliamentary sessions were held at Rothe House. Peter Rothe sympathized with the English crown, so the family was expelled by Oliver Cromwell during the conquest of Ireland . A relative, Bishop of Ossory David Rothe, resided at Rothe House during this period. During renovation work in 1850, a Confederation flag was also discovered in the house. Peter Rothe died in Galway. His sister later returned with her family, only to be expelled again in the 1690s because of her Jacobite attitude , this time by the Protestant Wilhelmites. Their property again fell to the Ormonde family.

Rothe House is the only fully preserved example of a medieval merchant house and the English Renaissance style that was introduced into Ireland by Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormonde .

18th century

In the 18th century the house was u. a. used as a school by George Buchanan, whose most prominent students were the brothers Michael & John Banim .

19th to 21st century

At the end of the 19th century, the building complex had already fallen into disrepair. Timothy O'Hanrahan bought the house in the 1890s and rented a room in the second house to the Gaelic League , which used the room to give Irish lessons and dance to traditional Irish music. One of the teachers was Thomas MacDonagh, one of the later leaders during the Easter Rising . The MacDonagh room named after him is still used by the Gaelic League today. Another connection to the Easter Rising is that there was a forge in the third courtyard, where the key was forged with which Éamon de Valera escaped from prison. The Kilkenny Archaeological Society (KAS) and the butcher Mr. Brennan bought Timothy O'Hanrahan's house in 1961 and opened a museum in the first house in 1962. All three buildings were restored on the initiative of the KAS by means of donations and municipal and EU funding.

Museum and garden

The museum was opened in 1962 by the Kilkenny Archaeological Society . Exhibits are donations from members and range from furniture to dishes and clothing to grinding stones (in the courtyards).

In the first house is the Phelan Room (named after the member Margaret M. Phelan), historically "Long Hall" , above the reception / souvenir shop . There, next to three Kilkenny marble chimneys and antique furniture, you can see the skull of an Irish giant deer, which was placed at the height where the head would have been during life. A winding staircase leads to the Lanigan Room (named after the member Katherine Lanigan) with the impressive roof stalls made of Irish oak.

In the second house, parts of the first flying machine built in Kilkenny and the blunderbuss of the robber James Freney are on display.

In the third house, artifacts dating back to the Stone Age are exhibited in showcases. The so-called Tudor kitchen in the third house and the garden are used for lectures, occasional theater performances and concerts.

During the work on the Ros Tapestry project, the embroidery frames are also housed in the Rothe House (mostly in the 2nd house), but not always open to the public.

Picture gallery

  • Giant Irish deer skull above the Kilkenny marble fireplace in the Phelan Room

  • Roof stalls in the Lanigan Room of the first house

  • Parts of the flying machine built by Godwin Meade Swifte (Lord Carlingford), exhibited in the 2nd house

  • The stone box grave found in Co. Carlow is now on display in the 2nd courtyard

  • Tudor kitchen in the 3rd house

garden

A wooden staircase leads to the garden, which was a parking lot until 2007 and was subordinate to the Office of Public Works . This was taken over in 2004 by the Kilkenny Archaeological Society and, due to archaeological excavations between 2005 and 2007, returned to the state of the 17th century. The entire garden is surrounded by a wall on which pears and other fruit are grown in the orchard in a trellis. Other fruits and berries are mulberry , gooseberry , apple , quince , medlar, and fig . The strawberry tree, native to Ireland, can also be seen on the wall that separates the vegetable garden and orchard. No pesticides are used in the garden, so visitors can try ripe fruits without hesitation.

During the 2005–2007 excavations, an 8 m deep well was discovered which, based on ceramic finds, was dated to the 13th – 14th centuries. Century could be dated and its construction thus falls on the time of the Cistercian possession. The existence of an orchard, a dovecote and a summer house could be derived from documents from the 17th century. A completely preserved dog skeleton of a pet named 'Pip' is exhibited in the third house. The archaeological investigations in the garden of the Rothe House are extremely valuable, as Rothe House is the only remaining property from this period.

gallery

  • View over the herb garden to the third house

  • View of the vegetable garden (end of August)

  • Pear tree "One Pound" in the trellis with fig tree in the foreground

  • Strawberry tree (end of August)

Accessibility

Due to the historical nature of the building complex, the museum is not barrier-free; numerous stairs and very uneven cobblestones make access difficult. In the garden there are panels in Braille on the walls that provide information about the garden in English.

literature

  • Claire Murphy: Ten civic families of Kilkenny: Archdekin, Archer, Cowley, Langton, Leys, Knaresborough, Lawless, Ragget, Rothe, Shee . In: Old Kilkenny Review 1954 , pp. 1-19.
  • Margaret M. Phelan: John Rothe Fitzpiers' monument at St Mary's, Kilkenny . In: Old Kilkenny Review 1993 , pp. 1228-1233.
  • Róisín McQuillan: The Rothe House family garden . In: Old Kilkenny Review 2008 , pp. 48-53.
  • Ann Tierney: The Bristol trade of John Rothe and Kilkenny merchants 1594-1595 and 1600-1601 . In: Old Kilkenny Review 2009 , pp. 85-101.
  • Louis Feeley: Rothe House restoration in the 1960s (part 2) . In: Old Kilkenny Review 2016 , pp. 167-172.

Web links

Commons : Rothe House  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Museum website
  2. ↑ Babita Sharma / Gerald Wait / Elizabeth Ozmin: Rothe House - A History. In: Old Kilkenny Review 2002, p. 53.
  3. ^ Jason Bolton: The Cistercians at Rothe House. In: Old Kilkenny Review 2014, p. 36.
  4. ↑ Sharma / Wait / Ozmin 2002, p. 55.
  5. ↑ Sharma / Wait / Ozmin 2002, p. 57.
  6. ↑ Sharma / Wait / Ozmin 2002, p. 60.
  7. ↑ Sharma / Wait / Ozmin 2002, pp. 60f.
  8. ↑ Coilin Ó Drisceoil: The Rothe Family Garden Rediscovered: An Interim Report on the 2007 Archaeological Excavation Project. In: Old Kilkenny Review 2008, p. 34.
  9. ↑ Katherine M. Lanigan: The Rothe Will, 1619 . In: Old Kilkenny Review 1963 , pp. 30-34.
  10. ↑ Sean Hurley Rothe house: Tudor mansion house becomes a monument . In: Old Kilkenny Review 1965 , p. 21.
  11. ↑ Hurley 1965, p. 21.
  12. ↑ Hurley 1965, p. 21.
  13. ↑ Ó Drisceoil 2008, p. 36.
  14. ↑ Sharma / Wait / Ozmin 2002, p. 58.
  15. ^ Edward J. Law: English Academy Kilkenny: George Buchanan's school at Rothe house, etc. 1787-1830, with Michael & John Banim as pupils . In: Old Kilkenny Review 2010, pp. 56-62.
  16. ↑ Hurley 1965, p. 21
  17. ↑ Anna T. de Loughry: Remembering Lincoln Prison escape 1919 . In: Old Kilkenny Review 1983 , pp. 468-470.
  18. ↑ Ó Drisceoil 2008, p. 39.
  19. ↑ Sean Hurley 1965, p. 20.
  20. ↑ Ó Drisceoil 2008, p. 34ff.
  21. ↑ Ó Drisceoil 2008, p. 37.
  22. ↑ Ó Drisceoil 2008, p. 37.