Irishtown, Kilkenny
Coordinates: 52°39′24.40″N 07°15′25.72″W / 52.6567778°N 7.2571444°W
Irishtown (Irish: An Baile Gaelach) is the neighborhood in Kilkenny in Ireland around St Canice's Cathedral. It was formerly a borough, also called Newcourt or St Canice's, separated by the River Breagagh from the walled town of Kilkenny to the south.
When the Diocese of Ossory was established at the Synod of Ráth Breasail in 1111, its original cathedral was at the Abbey of Aghaboe. However, it was moved in the 1120s to Kilkenny, the capital of the Mac Giolla Phádraig dynasty of the Kingdom of Ossory. The presence of St Canice's Cathedral spurred the growth of the existing settlement there. After the Norman invasion of Ireland, the Anglo-Normans built Kilkenny Castle nearby as the seat of the new County of Kilkenny, which had largely the same extent as the Kingdom of Ossory. Two separate boroughs were recognised: the "English Town" or "High Town" of the colonists around the Castle, and the Gaelic "Irish Town" around the Cathedral. When County Kilkenny was a liberty with a seneschal, the English borough of Kilkenny was within it, but the precincts of the cathedral were excluded from the liberty, in the "crosslands" (church ground) subject to the sheriff of County Dublin. Kilkenny and Irishtown were both walled towns with separate walls, and connected by Watergate Bridge over the Breagagh. Irishtown was poorer than Kilkenny. The corporation's seal, whose Latin inscription read "the common seal of the Kilkenny citizens of the see of Ossory", was of inferior metal to that of the Kilkenny corporation. The members of the corporation were clergy in the diocese.
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