The cathedral close does not seem to be native to Ireland. In English towns such as Wells and Salisbury, groups of buildings serving diverse ecclesiastical purposes and clustered in a semi-ordered form within the vicinity of the cathedral are common. Here, however, because of the distinctive character of Irish Roman Catholicism during the Middle Ages and the country's subsequent turbulent religious history, the close is unknown; cathedrals, both Church of Ireland and Catholic, tend to be sited in isolation from other related structures.
The Irish close that comes nearest to the English incarnation is in Kilkenny, where St Canice's has gathered about it a number of buildings associated with the cathedral. As indicated by its name in Irish - Cill Chainnigh - the origins of the city lie in the religious settlement established on a hill north-west of the River Nore, although there was an earlier church dedicated to St Patrick less than half a mile south. While its graveyard remains, this structure, which dated back to the fifth century, has vanished.
By the end of the seventh century, St Patrick's had been superseded in importance by the church of St Canice, standing within a large monastic enclosure the outline of which is still traced by surrounding thoroughfares such as Vicar and Dean streets.
Spread over a space of several acres on this hill are not just the cathedral but also a substantial graveyard, along with diverse gardens and orchards, the deanery, a library and accommodation for the organist, vicar and sexton, as well as the bishop's palace.
It is the forthcoming sale of the last of these that has brought St Canice's collective architectural heritage to public attention. Earlier this year, the Representative Church Body confirmed that the palace, home to successive bishops of Ossory since the 15th century, was to be purchased by the Government to serve as offices for the Heritage Council.
Today, the palace stands isolated behind its walls, at the end of a road that wraps around St Canice's graveyard, but prior to the 19th century there would have been no such division between the cathedral and the bishop's palace.
Indeed, in the south-west corner of the latter's gardens is a pretty pedimented structure in cut stone known as the Robing Room; this was built by Bishop Pococke around 1756 and was linked to the cathedral by a Doric colonnade that was probably demolished when the present road came into existence. Now in very poor condition, the little structure would have permitted residents of the palace to prepare for services in St Canice's, then proceed to the cathedral without venturing outdoors.
Set in the midst of attractive grounds sloping down to the north - where it is planned that a new home for the bishop will eventually be built - the palace as it now stands is a five-bay, three-storey structure with pitched roof and cut-stone Gibbsian doorway. A large 19th-century extension on the eastern side of the palace was demolished some 40 years ago, its space still marked by an expanse of tarmacadam. While the property's external appearance is that of an 18th-century house, the interior reveals evidence of a considerably older building.
The eastern end of the house comprises a 14th-century keep, probably built by Bishop Ledrede at some date after 1354, when he received royal permission to take down three churches and use their material to construct a residence. The ground floor of the keep, which later served as the palace's kitchen, retains its medieval appearance, with groined ceiling supported by a single central pillar. The front rooms of the present house are in the same style but must be later than the keep, perhaps dating from some time in the 15th century, as they also have groined ceilings and supporting pillars.
Behind this block lies an 18th-century extension, containing the palace's principal public rooms, a dining room on the ground floor and a drawing room immediately above. Both have three north-facing windows, but whereas the lower space has a colonnaded screen at the eastern end and a bow end to the west, in the drawing room only the second of these features is found on the east wall.
From the hall, each room is entered by a single door, its matching pair having been blocked when an enormous and elaborate staircase was brought into the house, requiring a realignment of the building's interior design.
These 18th-century stairs are another of the mysteries of the palace, as no one knows for sure when they arrived or where they came from; could it be that they had been designed for Kilkenny Castle and were moved to their present location when that building was redesigned from 1826 onwards? Their decoration includes towering Corinthian pilasters that are too big for the Venetian windows on the palace's first- and second-storey returns.
Similar carving also exists on a mahogany bookcase covering the east wall of the bishop's library, suggesting this item of furniture may have been brought into the house from the same place as the stairs. While the building contains a number of finely carved doorcases, it does not have any good plasterwork, a surprising absence in a house of this size and importance.
Elegant, if at present a little shabby, the palace appears to be much too large for its present occupants, Bishop Robert Neil and his wife, Betty, who almost never use the main spaces but have created a little sitting room for themselves in the old keep with a manageable adjacent kitchen. Staying put until his new residence is built within the next couple of years, Bishop Neil points out that, due to the nature of the palace and its additions, trying to add services such as decent plumbing is almost impossible. For him, it would seem, the palace is an anachronism and little suited to the present requirements of a bishop and his family, despite more than six centuries of occupation by his episcopal predecessors.
On the other hand, for those members of the Church of Ireland who have argued against the disposal of the palace, the building's importance lies precisely in the fact that for hundreds of years it has formed part of a greater whole. Indeed, this is what makes the conglomerate of buildings and grounds so fascinating. The handsome graveyard, for example, which today owes much of its appearance to the orderly impulses of the mid-19th century Dean Vignoles, deserves to be explored, for an opportunity both to look at the old tombs and to see the earthworks thrown up against several walls, seemingly by Cromwell when he attempted to fortify the site.
Part of the western extremity is now occupied by a range of buildings of one and two storeys. The first of these is now the organist's house, while the more substantial adjacent block dates in part back to the 13th century. By the mid-16th century, however, it was being used as a school established by the Earl of Ormonde.
After this establishment closed, the first floor of the building became St Canice's Library, based around the collection of books bequeathed in 1693 by Bishop Thomas Otway and enhanced some 60 years later by that of his successor in the diocese, Edward Maurice. The latter also provided 10 oak presses, the majority of which remain inside the library, which is open to the public on request and found at the top of a handsome 18th-century mahogany staircase.
Here can be discovered another of the architectural accretions that make a visit to St Canice's so worthwhile - a small section of encased balustrading indicates the stairs formerly led to an open gallery. Inside the library room, the book collections of Otway and Maurice remain, showing that the interests of Georgian ecclesiastical gentlemen extended beyond matters of religion to include European literature, botany and geography.
Three years ago, a new residence for the vicar of St Canice's was created in the lower section of the building, entered through a canopied doorway that matches that of the library. This is just one of the refurbishment tasks undertaken during the past decade by the present dean of St Canice's, Norman Lynas.
He says that, over this period, in the region of £300,000 has been spent on the cathedral and its surroundings, a large amount of which was needed for roofing and guttering work. The crack in the cathedral's east wall is obviously going to demand further expenditure.
Dean Lynas lives in a well-proportioned house to the south of the graveyard and at the top of a steep incline created in the 18th century, known as the Coach Road. Built over a 30-year period from 1755 onwards on the site of a much older property, the three-storey deanery is described by its present occupant, quoting earlier sources, as "a commodious gentleman's residence".
It has a garden to the south and west and a walled orchard on the other side of Coach Road. Beyond the orchard are two medieval buildings, one of them serving as the sexton's house; on its eastern wall is a large mid-16th-century stone escutcheon bearing the arms and name of the boy king, Edward VI.
Next to this are St Canice's Steps, a limestone flight created in 1614 to allow the townspeople easy access to the cathedral, which concludes with an arch. From here it is possible either to pass through another archway into the grounds of the cathedral or to walk along an extension of the Coach Road and thereby reach the gates of the bishop's palace.
Other than a handful of decorated stones, nothing remains of the pre-Norman stone church and monastic settlement of St Canice's, but the round tower still standing immediately to the south of the cathedral dates from the 11th or early 12th century. The Hiberno-Romanesque St Canice's was replaced in the 13th century by the present Early Gothic structure, begun during the episcopacy of Hugh de Rous, continued over a period of some 70 years and concluded by the addition of the Lady Chapel in the 1280s.
Ireland's second-largest medieval cathedral, and probably the one that has best retained its original character, St Canice's is a symmetrical cruciform building with five-bay aisled nave and a choir flanked by chapels projecting from the transepts, the whole of which is topped by a low central tower (a more ambitious bell tower in the same place fell down in the 1330s).
The bulk of the cathedral is constructed of the local dark-grey limestone, although sandstone was used for parts of the elaborately carved main western doorway. At the other end of the structure is the three-lancet east window, once renowned for its 14th-century stained glass.
In 1645, John Baptist Rinucinni, the nuncio at the Catholic Confederation of Kilkenny, offered to purchase these windows for £700 but was refused; six years later, all the glass was smashed by Cromwell's troops.
At the moment, the east window is a matter of some concern because a stress crack has appeared, running from top to bottom of the wall, which has been placed under additional strain as a result. Exterior repointing will be required to resolve this difficulty.
Although the building underwent restoration in the 19th century, work that was started in 1866 by Sir Thomas Deane, this did not alter the appearance of the cathedral too radically. Much of the glass dates from this period and slightly later; one window, for example, was designed by Sarah Purser and Ethel M. Rhind and executed around 1918.
St Canice's is notable for the airy spaciousness of its interior, which holds more than 100 funerary monuments - unquestionably the finest such collection outside Dublin, including the substantial 16th-century effigies to Piers, the eighth Earl of Ormonde, and his wife, Margaret.