Kyteler's Inn — the Alice Kyteler trial, 1324

OVERVIEW

A stone-vaulted house on St. Kieran's Street in the middle of Kilkenny, held to be the house of Dame Alice Kyteler (c. 1260 – after 1324), a wealthy moneylender four times married. It has been a public house for a long time and trades openly on the name.

HISTORY

In 1324 Alice Kyteler's stepson Richard de Valle, resentful of her widow's dower, brought a complaint to Richard de Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory. Ledrede turned it into a charge of heresy and sorcery: denying the faith and the power of the Church, sacrificing to a demon called Robin Artisson, and bewitching and killing her husbands for their money. Kyteler had been accused of homicide once before, in 1302, and had been protected then by Edward I himself. This time she fled the country, to England or to Flanders; there is no record of her afterwards. Her servant Petronilla de Meath was tortured, made to confess, flogged, and burned at the stake in Kilkenny on 3 November 1324 — the first person burned for heresy in Ireland.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

This is a court case, not a haunting, and it is on the map because it is the origin point of the Irish witchcraft record and because the building the proceedings name is still standing and still open. The pub reports the usual — figures, cold in the cellars — and the entry does not lean on that. What it records is Petronilla, who was real, who was twenty-odd years old, and who was burned alive in a town square that is a five-minute walk from the door.

VISITING

An ordinary working pub in Kilkenny city centre, open daily, with live music. St. Kieran's Street.