Blue Kilkenny Limestone: for centuries, a sustainable material
Kilkenny Limestone is a compact dark limestone. This material has been used for centuries for indoor and outdoor applications. You can use this natural stone for paving, kitchen worktops, flooring, interior finishes and so on. This blue limestone stands its ground indoors and outdoors.
Patio slabs - stonewashed
Bespoke paving & patio slabs
Blue Kilkenny Limestone is a solid choice for landscaping gardens, terraces and outdoor spaces. Our versatile natural stone effortlessly blends with landscaped gardens, brick walls, or other surface materials like tropical hardwood. Moreover, there is a suitable finish available for every type of garden. For instance, flamed tiles fit well in a sleek garden, stonewashed random lengths give your terrace a rustic look, and a mix of honed and hand cleft stone strips truly shines in a rustic setting. Explore all possible finishes or let yourself be further inspired by this year's outdoor trends!
Paving setts - tumbled
Elevate your garden and outdoor space
Kilkenny Limestone offers a timeless appeal for outdoor landscaping projects. With its natural beauty and durability, Kilkenny Limestone is a versatile choice for various outdoor applications such as paving, cladding, and accent features. Its characteristic warm grey tones and wide range of finishes add depth and sophistication to any outdoor space, whether it's a garden pathway, patio, or retaining wall. Additionally, Kilkenny Limestone's resilience to weathering ensures long-lasting beauty, making it an excellent investment for enhancing the aesthetics and functionality of outdoor environments.
Hardwearing yet tasteful, tumbled paving Kilkenny Limestone cobbles are an ideal choice for clients desiring a more natural landscaped effect. With characterful detailing around the cobble edges, and relatively small dimensions and thickness (5cm), the tumbled paving line is suitable for a variety of landscaping projects.
Find inspiration in our portfolio of patio installations showcasing Kilkenny Limestone tiles:
Pond copings and centre strips - diamond cut and flamed
Planters
Wall capping
Patio slabs - bush hammered
Patio slabs
Patio slabs - Fossil stone
Patio slabs - Fossil stone
Pool copings - Fossil stone
Patio slabs - Fossil stone
Patio slabs - stonewashed
Bespoke paving & patio slabs
Blue Kilkenny Limestone is a solid choice for landscaping gardens, terraces and outdoor spaces. Our versatile natural stone effortlessly blends with landscaped gardens, brick walls, or other surface materials like tropical hardwood. Moreover, there is a suitable finish available for every type of garden. For instance, flamed tiles fit well in a sleek garden, stonewashed random lengths give your terrace a rustic look, and a mix of honed and hand cleft stone strips truly shines in a rustic setting. Explore all possible finishes or let yourself be further inspired by this year's outdoor trends!
Paving setts - tumbled
Elevate your garden and outdoor space
Kilkenny Limestone offers a timeless appeal for outdoor landscaping projects. With its natural beauty and durability, Kilkenny Limestone is a versatile choice for various outdoor applications such as paving, cladding, and accent features. Its characteristic warm grey tones and wide range of finishes add depth and sophistication to any outdoor space, whether it's a garden pathway, patio, or retaining wall. Additionally, Kilkenny Limestone's resilience to weathering ensures long-lasting beauty, making it an excellent investment for enhancing the aesthetics and functionality of outdoor environments.
Hardwearing yet tasteful, tumbled paving Kilkenny Limestone cobbles are an ideal choice for clients desiring a more natural landscaped effect. With characterful detailing around the cobble edges, and relatively small dimensions and thickness (5cm), the tumbled paving line is suitable for a variety of landscaping projects.
Find inspiration in our portfolio of patio installations showcasing Kilkenny Limestone tiles:
Pond copings and centre strips - diamond cut and flamed
Planters
Wall capping
Patio slabs - bush hammered
Patio slabs
Patio slabs - Fossil stone
Patio slabs - Fossil stone
Pool copings - Fossil stone
Patio slabs - Fossil stone
Quality assured
Kilkenny Limestone maintains a quality approach to their work. The company subjects all processes to rigourous and regular quality control checks, from inspection of raw materials, through monitoring of the entire manufacturing process to final quality approval and guarantee of end products.
Kilkenny Limestone’s system of CE marking highlights the performance standards expected from our products. The products are produced from ATGcertified materials. The ISO: 9001 quality system implemented by Kilkenny Limestone is independently audited and verified. The low-waste production methods used complement the naturally low embedded carbon that makes Irish Blue Limestone an exceptionally environmentally friendly material.
Extracted with respect for nature
Kilkenny Limestone is always extracted with respect for the environment in line with the demands of sustainable entrepreneurship and has obtained the ISO 14001: 2015 certificate for Environmental Management System. It offers a systematic framework to manage the immediate and long term environmental impacts of an organisation’s products, services and processes.
Moreover, Kilkenny Limestone actively invest in the deployment of a ZeroWaste program. Driven by the belief that Irish Blue Limestone is a precious resource that should be used wisely and never wasted, great strides are being made in the eventual elimination of waste products from all manufacturing processes.
A finish for every purpose
Various shade and finish combinations tease the stone into its many expressions of colour and texture. By offering 15 finishes, we always find the finish that best suits the material, your tastes, and the style of your home.
Get inspired
Our quarries
Our quarries produce the well-known Kilkenny Limestone in two varieties: classic blue & fossil. They can be used for internal and external applications and are supplied to prestigious projects across Ireland, UK, Europe and worldwide.
Old Leighlin Quarry
Holdensrath Quarry
Kellymount Quarry
From quarry to finished product
From 3 million cubic metres of blue limestone reserves at Old Leighlin, Kellymount and Holdensrath, Kilkenny Limestone annually quarries c. 75.000m³ for processing into limestone slab and its full suite of finished stone products.
Our history
Kilkenny Limestone Quarries is rooted in a fine tradition of blue limestone production. Inspired by centuries of master-craftsmen before us, we are honoured to be the principal suppliers of the stone to modern day architectural and design projects from rural Ireland to downtown Manhattan. Production of our entire blue limestone range is carried out at our Irish quarry facilities in Carlow and Kilkenny under a rigorous quality system.
1930
First quarry
The venture which led to Kilkenny Limestone began when John Sisk & Son acquired an Irish Blue Limestone quarry near Ballinasloe, Co. Galway in response to the growing demand for native Irish stone in the building projects of the new Irish state.
1950
Old Leighlin
As the resources at the Ballinasloe site were utilized in the construction of Galway Cathedral, the company sought to expand operations with two new quarries at Ballybrew, Co. Wicklow and Old Leighlin, Co. Carlow.
1970
Cladding & paving
The 1970s marked a period of change in how Kilkenny Limestone was manufactured and marketed, with a move away from solely ornamental uses for the stone. We began to innovate more practical and functional applications, such as cladding and paving. A good example of work from this period is the Met Eireann Headquarters at Glasnevin, Dublin with its angled façade of blue limestone cladding.
1980
New export channels
During an era of economic difficulties for Ireland, Kilkenny Limestone began to forge new export channels for blue limestone products, particularly in Europe, developing a strong reputation within the Dutch and Belgian markets. The operation of a Belgian subsidiary enabled us to strengthen our foothold in Europe, expanding our reach across a number of countries.
1990
Iconic buildings
Over the last two decades, Kikenny Limestone has made continued investment, not just into the Irish market, but also within the UK. These significant strides received recent recognition in being selected as suppliers to Norman Foster’s illustrious flagship project on the River Thames – the MoreLondon Development. Stone Developments are also proud partners in the construction of many of modern Ireland’s most iconic buildings, including Department of Finance, Dublin, Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork and Offaly County Council Civic Offices.
2011
Brachot Family Member
In 2011, the three quarries of Old Leighlin Co. Carlow, Kellymount and Holdensrath Co. Kilkenny were brought under one name, Kilkenny Limestone, as part of the Belgian Brachot Group.
The Story of Irish Blue Limestone
The Story of Kilkenny Limestone and formation of the Irish Blue Limestone in general, begins long ago before the Ages of Man or the Age of the Dinosaurs, during what is called the ‘Age of the Crinoids’, some 340 million years ago.
In the warm, shallow, tropical seas that once extended across much of what we know today as north-east Europe, sea life and calcium carbonate crystallised over time to form the sedimentary rock with its characteristic coral strata, crinoid, brachiopod and gastropod fossils. There it remained for hundreds of millions of years until Europe’s settlers began to conceive of building robust and timeless structures. The story of this material tracks the development of civilisation in Ireland. Blue limestone was used by the Neolithic people to construct monuments in a time before the Pyramids of Egypt were first imagined.
As society developed, the stone was utilized for the more sophisticated means of carving and is seen in Ireland’s famed Celtic crosses. A technically superior building material, the stone’s elegant and timeless qualities have been consistently celebrated in Irish architecture from ancient monasteries and abbeys to the castles and houses of chieftains and lords. This is a tradition that continues through to the modern day. Fully appreciating the rarity and uniqueness of this stone, Kilkenny Limestone has dedicated itself to its correct and appropriate usage in contributing to the great buildings and landscapes of our modern age.
