Kilkenny

Begun as an early sixth-century ecclesiastical foundation inside the Kingdom of Ossory, and turned into a Norman merchant town after the twelfth-century invasion, with a castle and a ring of walls put up to protect its burghers. William Marshall, Lord of Leinster, gave it a town charter in 1207, and by the late thirteenth century it was under Hiberno-Norman control. It stands on both banks of the Nore, with St Canice’s Cathedral and its round tower, Rothe House, the Black Abbey and the Tholsel among the buildings that survive.