An antique mid 18th century Palladian style, Irish Kilkenny Fossil marble chimneypiece

The jambs with simple scrolled corbels above plain pilasters, the frieze with break-fronted centre tablet, under a moulded edge cornice shelf. 

Made from a dark grey/black Kilkenny marble with many light coloured coral fossils. 

Circa 1750 

Kilkenny marble is a fine-grained very dark grey carboniferous limestone found around County Kilkenny in Ireland in the “Butlersgrove Formation”, a Lower Carboniferous limestone that contains fossils of brachiopods, gastropods, crinoids and corals. The first and main source was the “Black Quarry” in the townlands of Archersgrove and Gallowshill just south of Kilkenny city, which was used from the 17th to the 19th century. Kilkenny is nicknamed “the Marble City”; the footpaths of the city streets were paved with Kilkenny marble flagstones, which were highly polished with wear and glistened when wet.