The site of Irishtown was the capital of the Mac Giolla Phádraig dynasty of the medieval Kingdom of Ossory, and a daughter house ofAghaboe Abbey was built there. In 1111 the Synod of Ráth Breasail divided Ireland into dioceses, with the Diocese of Ossory based on the Gaelic kingdom and the abbey church became St Canice's Cathedral. The name Kilkenny is from the Irish Cill Chainnigh "church of St. Canice". The status of episcopal seat spurred the growth of the existing settlement. After the Norman invasion of Ireland, the Anglo-Normans built Kilkenny Castle near by 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" 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. In 1609, Kilkenny borough was made a city, and a County of the City was created, separate from County Kilkenny, with its own sheriff and grand jury. The city comprised parts of four parishes, and the new county covered the whole of each, with the area outside the borough forming the "liberties" of the city. The borough of Irishtown in the parish of St Canice was thenceforth in the liberties of the County of the City of Kilkenny. It was through Dean's Gate in 1650 that Cromwell's army entered Irishtown and from there captured Kilkenny, capital of Confederate Ireland. St Canice Borough was a borough constituency in the House of Commons of Ireland, separate from Kilkenny City constituency. The latter was in the direct control of the Earl of Ormond, whereas the patron of St Canice was the Bishop of Ossory in the established Church of Ireland. Since the power of appointing the bishop was in the gift of the Earl of Ormond, the practical difference was slight. Although St Canice Borough was disfranchised at the Acts of Union 1800, the borough corporation remained separate from that of Kilkenny until the Municipal Corporations Act 1840. That Act abolished both corporations, and appointed the town commissioners of Kilkenny borough as successors to both, and defined new limits of the borough of Kilkenny, which included all the land of both predecessor boroughs. The Irishtown corporation records were transferred to the Kilkenny Tholsel. In 1846, the Parliamentary Gazetteer wrote:
Geography
The historic neighbourhood retains a distinctive local character within the modern city of Kilkenny. The street leading south from the Cathedral to the Breagagh is called Irishtown.
