Leper Hospital’s secrets may be hidden underground

If there’s one thing that frustrates the small but committed team that has been having major preservation works done to the ruins of the 12th century Leper Hospital at Kilbixy, near Ballynacargy, it’s that they can’t get the funds that would enable them to commission an underground dig there.

That would be the best way of finding out more about the size of the building and how it was used, believes David Miller of the Kilbixy and District Conservation Association.

“There is something down lower, but we can’t get at that at the moment,” says David.

“It could have been something like a three-storey building – or even four: we just don’t know yet. It’s below ground level at the moment because there’s so much rubble and stone and everything lying around.”

Hugh de Lacy is reputed to have had the hospital built in 1197. More than 900 years on from construction of the hospital, the answers to questions on the number of patients the hospital would have accommodated, and on conditions there are, at this stage, unknown.

“This is the disappointing thing: if we could just get that bottom layer access sorted out, we might just have a lot better idea of how the building was used. But at the moment, we are just preserving what’s above ground,” says David.

“It’s rather a disappointment to me actually that we’re being told we are very unlikely to get a grant to dig down to the foundations, because that’s where the real archaeology is, down there.

“Also we haven’t found the official entrance to it yet: that must be below ground.”

It’s not that he’s ungrateful for the grant aid received so far: he’s just fired with a hunger to know more about the ruin.

Grant aid totalling just under €80,000 has been spent on the project between 2019 and 2021. The 2021 works entailed removal of vegetation and stabilisation of the north wall.

“We are at the moment putting in an application for another year for a grant, and if we get that, we’ll get one more wall done. There is another wall at the back of the building that needs to be underpinned,” says David.

“At the moment, the archaeologist is telling us that we won’t get a grant to excavate the bottom, to see what’s down there, because it is a project that would need to be taken on by a university or somebody like that. They don’t think we would get a grant to do it.

“UCD are interested – but they haven’t got any money.”

The ruin is substantial in size, and stands on the approach to St Bigseach’s church at Kilbixy It is the best-preserved of the three leper hospital ruins in Ireland.

It is an important site says Westmeath heritage officer, Melanie McQuade: “The structure is part of an expansive archaeological landscape, consisting of the early Christian monastery of St Bigseach, an Anglo-Norman castle site dating to c.1190, the medieval borough of Kilbixy, which flourished from that time until c.1450, and the nearby Augustinian abbey of Tristernagh.”

“It was either going to end up as a pile of stones, or we were going to have to do something,” says David.

“We’ve got three walls so we thought it was well worth saving and doing something about.”

“At the moment, we think we’ve got two storeys – perhaps three – but we’re not sure.

“I’ve looked up umpteen things online trying to work out exactly what the history is. It is wondered if it wasn’t at first a manor house. There is a motte and bailey also in the precincts of Kilbixy and historians are wondering if they moved from there and we have evidence that it was in existence in the 1300s and 1400s because there was money made available, and it just says ‘for the leper hospital’, and it looks as if there may have been at least one extra floor put on top.”

There isn’t a formal ‘leper graveyard’, but committee members suspect that the remains of those who died of the disease at the hospital were buried nearby.

The building is currently fenced off in the hope of funding coming through to stabilise the final portions.

The 2021 works were carried out by Stone Art Conservation, overseen by an archaeologist from Courtney Deery Heritage Consultancy and as specified by conservation architect Richard McLoughlin of Lotts Architecture.

“These works were part of a conservation project on the monument that is being carried out on a phased basis as funding allows,” says Melanie, adding that the works were informed by a conservation plan prepared for the site in 2018.

The dream of Richard and the team is that the site can be posted as a cycle destination as it is just a 10-minute spin from the Royal Canal greenway at Ballynacargy.