Kilkenny hurling hails from Cork?

Freshford’s triangular village green (with 52 chestnut trees, one for every month of the year) has the look of an Ulster ‘Planter Village’ but the ‘settlers’ in Freshford were from Munster.

Around the year 400 Cucrai son of Duach and his followers arrived in Co Kilkenny from Muskerry to occupy Achadh Ur (the Irish name for Freshford) and the neighbouring townlands of Banta na Maoinigh (the ‘Plain of the Munstermen’) and Ban ua nDuach, (the ‘Plain of Duach’, their leader’s father).

The settlement grew and its Munster connection was deepened when a Cork monk named Lachtain arrived in the 6^th century.

Lactain was a graduate from Comhghall’s great monastic school in Bangor and returned south to set up a monastic school among his fellow Corkonians at Achadh Ur before heading home. Among the communities he was to set up in his native county was  Cill na Martra (the Church of the Relics) where his own relic was preserved in an arm-shaped reliquary, at present it is in the National Museum in Dublin.

After Lactain’s time, the Freshford community grew and was recognised as a diocese. It remained as such until the church reorganisation of 1111. Even then its importance was not forgotten and Hugh Mapleton, the first Norman Bishop of Ossory, built his episcopal palace there in 1250.

After the Reformation in 1553 the argumentative John Bale (known as ‘Bilious Bale’ and ’Foulmouthed Bale’), a ‘reformed’ English Carmelite Friar, came to live at Uppercourt, the bishop’s house, as the first Protestant Bishop of Ossory. He was already known for strong anti-Catholic views and at his consecration in Dublin refused to use the old rituals proposed by the Protestant Bishop Browne, insisting on the new Protestant English version.

Bale never got on well in Freshford. He preached Protestant doctrine regularly in Kilkenny cathedral, attacking the ‘idolatries’ and ‘hypocrisies’ of the Catholic priests and urging them to take wives.

On 8th September, the Catholic holiday of the Nativity of Mary, he insisted that his servants go to work in the fields. This caused a riot among the local people in which five of his servants were killed. The bishop fled and never returned.

In 1653 a Cromwellian soldier, Captain Sir George Askew, was given Uppercourt in settlement for a debt of £200 and afterwards ownership of the house and land never stayed long enough with one family to create a local ‘dynasty’.

Today the pride of Freshford is its iconic 12^th century Hiberno-Romanesque church door on the site of Lacatain’s foundation. Its ornamentation is beginning to fade but a human head remains on the keystone, a Celtic reminder from bygone days.  

Freshford’s story is said to date from Cucrai’s arrived from Muskerry with his band of followers. Those Cork roots and the impact of another Corkman, Lachtain, are still acknowledged. However there is no suggestion that the Corkmen brought the roots of Killkenny’s hurling skills with them.  Even the combative outsider, John Bale, would have realised it might be going too far to insinuate that.