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Spenser the administrator would have taken a keen interest in the extent and progress of the Munster plantation. As a government official, he was intimately familiar with Ireland’s lawcourts, including those concerning property rights. As one of the…

The lute was a popular renaissance instrument similar to the modern-day guitar. Eric Klingelhofer’s excavations of Kilcolman in the mid-1990s uncovered a tuning peg for a lute or similar stringed instrument. The find was located in a stratification…

One never knows who might come calling. Behind the curtain in the Parlor is a gun loop, a hole through which a gun can be fired, and which provides a clear shot at the front door leading into the Great Hall. Spenser lived at Kilcolman under constant…

This desk, with a pouch and various papers and letters on and around it, indicates Spenser’s background as both a messenger and a secretary to Lord Deputy of Ireland Arthur, Lord Grey (from 1580-82). The letters are sealed with red wax. In the…

The date stone over the door to the Great Hall commemorates the wedding in 1594 of Edmund Spenser and Elizabeth Boyle. Date stones with the initials of the owners of a house were common in England and Ireland and followed the fashion in other…

On the floor near the fireplace sits a bellows, for encouraging the fire. Spenser would likely have had a smithy on his Kilcolman estate, which would have employed similar tools. Iron-working debris predating Spenser’s occupation and presumably from…

On the main banqueting table in the Great Hall sits a “mether,” which is a four-sided, four-handled Irish drinking vessel carved of wood. See also the methers in the Tower House Parlor. An example from the 16th century with the provenance…

This great oak mantelpiece is fancifully modeled after two different early modern wall-pieces found in situ in Ireland today: 1) the allegorical figures in plaster wainscoting in the Long Gallery of Carrick-on-Suir, Co. Tipperary, commissioned in the…

When the great Spanish Armada was defeated by the English and blown away from the English Channel in 1588, many of its ships sailed homeward by first travelling north, rounding Scotland and Ireland, then travelling out into the open Atlantic on their…

The sheela-na-gig is a “female exhibitionist figure” carved in stone and found most often in the walls of medieval Irish and British buildings, usually castles or churches. Over one hundred are known to exist in Ireland, roughly twice the number as…