The Tidy Towns Committee in Graiguenamanagh, Co. Kilkenny wants to erect twelve statues of Cistercian monks in the village’s historic Duiske Abbey. The committee has proposed that the life-sized statues would be erected as a public art display in the grounds of the abbey along the banks of the River Barrow.
The proposal has been submitted to Kilkenny County Council for advice as to whether planning approval would be needed for the statues.
Committee spokesman Redmond Ryan said the committee wants to place the statues on public land and has ten locations selected already.
“We’re investigating the proposal at this stage but that’s the aspiration and we are working on it,” he said.
He pledged that an expert on Cistercian abbeys would oversee the design process to ensure that the statues reflect accurately Duiske’s monastic residents.
Mr Ryan said that each statue would cost approximately €2,000 and as to funding the project, one avenue being explored was that members of the public would be invited to sponsor a statue and that in return the monk would be carved in their likeness.
This would be offered to local residents or personalities from County Kilkenny, he said.
Duiske Abbey was founded in 1204 and populated by monks who came from Wiltshire in England.
Two decades later, the community had 36 monks and 50 lay brothers and was one of Ireland’s largest.
It thrived until the reign of King Henry VIII who suppressed it in 1536, whereupon the abbey gradually fell into ruin and passed to the Earl of Ormond.
The church was returned to the Catholic community in 1812 and was restored in the 1980s as a parish church.
SIC: CIN