Background
Richard Graves, kept a school in the city, and James himself was born on Street Canice"s day, 11 October.
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James Graves
Edit ProfileEducation
He went to Trinity College, Dublin in 1834, from where he graduated with a Bachelor in 1839.
Career
A native of Kilkenny, James"s father, the Revd. He later regretted that he had not been named Kenny after the patron saint to whom he thus had a double allegiance. Appointed curate to Skeirke in Company
Laois, he rapidly obtained preferment, and as curate of Street Patrick"s Kilkenny, was attached as Treasurer to Street Canice"s Cathedral, before gaining a living in the county.
Although married, he had no children. His fame rests in his antiquarian and archaeological interests, rather than in his clerical pursuits.
His main point of interest however was the architecture of his own city and county, and his interests therefore were focussed not on the pre-Norman period of Irish history but on the period from circa 1169 onward. In particular, he was responsible for the careful conservation work on Street Canice"s cathedral in Kilkenny city, while he was treasurer, and in the 1860s and 1870s he worked through the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, of which he was himself a founding member, towards the conservation of several important ruined medieval churches.
Although he is never accorded the degree of fame as a founding father of Irish archaeology which is given to Petrie, his effort towards the preservation of medieval Irish buildings was highly significant.
In particular, as a respectable Anglican clergyman, he was able to gain the ear of the establishment more easily than some of his Catholic contemporaries.
