Turtle Bunbury

Writer and Historian

 
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HISTORY

WRITE AROUND IRELAND

Follow me up to Carlow

(This article was originally written in 2000AD for a light-hearted travel website and has been loosely updated since).

Anyone wishing to know more about County Carlow should consider joining the Rootsweb Mailing List at IRL-CARLOW-request@rootsweb.com

For details of Carlow's historic jewellery collection and a photograph of Turtle and his wife Ally Bunbury, see "The History Ring of Carlow".

Carlow Town
Once among the most turbulent frontier towns of Norman and then English rule, Carlow is today a town that can only get better and better. Back in the mid to late 20th century, Carlow could not have been much worse. Its fine buildings were limited to a classical Court House, a Gothic Cathedral, a few Georgian townhouses, some nostalgic Victorian shop-fronts and an enormous dolmen. The population seemed entirely subject to the whims and fancies of the bosses at the town's Braun and Siucra (Sugar Beet) factories. There wasn't a whole lot of craic to be had. But then a heroic local TD (Irish members of parliament) managed to convince the powers that be to provide Carlow with a third level college, known today as the Carlow IT (Institute of Technology). Kilkenny City, 30 miles to the west, had been in the offing for the college but the TD convinced the government that giving it to Carlow would provide a much needed lifeline for the struggling town. The first students rolled into Carlow during the 1980s, thirsty for a pint and somewhere to boogie by night. Carlow's resurrection had begun.

A Norman Frontier Post
Carlow takes its name from the Irish word 'Catherlagh', referring to a large rock at the centre of the town which was once surrounded by water. The Normans erected a timber castle here in about 1180 but it was inevitably burned down by disgruntled clansmen in the surrounding neighbourhood. How did they light fires in those days anyhow? At any rate, the Normans duly twigged that stone castles fare better than wooden ones and so a new and rather large castle was erected between 1207 and 1213 by Strongbow's son-in-law, the celebrated jousting champion and all round chivalrous knight, William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke. The castle was of immense strategic value to the Norman conquest of Ireland being located in the heart of the MacMurrough kingdom (ie: the former kingdom of Strongbow's father-in-law Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster) as well as affording a strategic crossing point across the River Barrow. The town was walled in 1361 by Lionel, Duke of Clarence.
Less than 50 years later, Art MacMurrough, ancestral King of Leinster, captured both town and castle and burned the entirety. During the Desmond Wars against Queen Elizabeth I's army, Carlow was again captured, in 1577, by Rory Og O More.

Cromwell in CarlowDuring the Confederate Wars, General Henry Ireton's republican forces laid siege to the castle in 1650. On 26th July, the castle garrison of 200 men marched out. The events as they unfolded were recorded in an officer's diary:

"Friday, 26th. The defeated Garrison of Catherlough marched away according to the terms of capitulation. They were in number about 200 foot soldiers. We installed part of Colonel Ewers Regiment in the castle.

Saturday, 27th. We removed our quarters to the other side of Catherlagh, about half a mile from the town towards Castledermot.

Sunday, 28th. We marched towards Athy, and established quarters at Grange Mellon, proposing to view Athy and to consider fortifying the place, and to do for it as should be convenient.

Monday, 29th. By order from My Lord we were carred and marched back towards Catherlough and passing over the new bridge we went towards Cloghgrennan which is now surrendered and garrisoned and that night we established quarters beyond Leighlinbridge. "

Another account of the surrender came from General Ludlow, commander in Cromwell's army;

'The news of the defeat of the Irish in Ulster being brought to those in Carlo, who had held out in the hopes of relief from their friends in Ulster, together with a great scarcity of provisions in the place, besides the beating down of the little Castle, that stood at the foot of the bridge on the other side of the river which happened about the same time, so discouraged those within that they surrendered the place to the Lord-Deputy Ireton upon Terms; which he caused punctually to be implemented, as his constant manner was.'


Cromwell's men proceeded to demolish the castle by knocking out the windows, doors and floors of the building thus making sure that the castle would never again be used for defensive purposes. Described by one historian as "doggerel verse of the time" the following few lines record the effect that Cromwell's forces had on the castle:

'Such walls surround her
That no nine-pounder
Could ever plunder
That place of strength
But Oliver Cromwell
He did pummel
And made a breach in
The battlement"


Carlow in 1798The town was the scene of one of the more brutal massacres of 1798.

The Six Bs
Over the course of the 18th and 19th century, the borough and county of Ireland were largely represented in parliament by a member of the "Six B's", that is one of the six main landowning families in Carlow whose name happened to begin with B. These were the Brownes, Bruens, Butlers, Bagenals, Beechers and a particularly caddish clan called the Bunburys. Another family of prominence was the Kavanaghs, descendents of the McMurrough Kings of Leinster of whom their most celebrated member was The Incredible Art Kavanagh, a man born without limbs who nonetheless managed to travel the world and represent Carlow in Westminster Parliament. Despite the inevitable turbulence which flared up across Carlow - particularly during the 1798 Rebellion and the rise of Daniel O'Connell - Carlow Town enjoyed a period of relative prosperity during this era.
Like many an Irish town, Carlow had a booming industry in the export of woollen yarn to England.Notable buildings erected in the early 19th century included a grand Catholic Cathedral, the Greek Revival Court House and train station to greet the Great Southern & Western Railway. Carlow became the first town outside Dublin to have electric street lighting when the Alexander's of Milford successfully creating a water-generator on the Barrow.

Battle of Carlow, May 25th 1798
When the rebellion broke out in the spring of '98, the Carlow United Irishmen were headed up by a young brogue-maker named Mick Heydon. He succeeded to the leadership when his commanding officer, Peter Ievers, was arrested with several other influential United Irishmen at Oliver Bond's house in March of that year. By the midde of May, the British authorities had become deeply alarmed by the sudden and ferocious outburst of rebellion across Leinster. Almost every garrison had retreated from the Pale to the headquarters in Naas. Only the garrisons of Athy and Carlow remained where they had originally been stationed. Heydon had been having a hard time keeping his men inspired during the dark months before the uprising. He now saw an opportunity to give the lads a big morale booster. He split his 4000 strong volunteer force into three different columns and called in a fourth from across the Barrow in Queen's County (now County Laois). The pikemen were then instructed to meet up in Carlow's Potato Market for a big fireworks display round about 2:00 am on the 25th May.
Heydon seems to have been under the impression that the yeomen, officers and citizens of Carlow would be pleased as punch to see thousands of pike-wielding rebels storm their town. Such was not the case. The inhabitants of Carlow remained loyal to the Dublin Government. Worse still for the rebels, the alert garrison commander in Carlow was well prepared for an assault and had placed his forces - two companies of militia, several yeomanry corps and a posse of the Ninth Dragoons - in strategic positions around the town.
At 2:00am on the 25th May, the rebels jubilantly marched straight into an ambush. The ferocious racket of musket fire resounded across the town's rooftops and down its many alleyways, compounded by the screams of dying men and women. The optimistic pikemen were rapidly converted into a mound of corpses. More than 500 men were killed before a devastated Mick Heydon sounded the retreat. A further 200 were later executed. Witnesses said the stench was only unbearable, made worse by the fact half the town was on fire. Some 3000 rebels managed to escape and headed east past Rathvilly to the small village of Hacketstown. Here a brave loyalist garrison somehow managed to hold the fort and keep them at bay. The remains of 417 of the rebels killed in the Potato Market were buried across the River Barrow at Graigue in a site known as the Croppie's Grave.

Carlow Castle
Once upon a time Carlow Castle was a magnificent rectangular Norman fortress with a round turret on each corner dominating the landscape for miles around. It had been built on an a rock, surrounded by water, between 1207 and 1213. An earlier manor made of timber and earth was erected on the site circa 1180 by Hugh de Lacy for John de Clahull, the Norman baron who held 'Catharlogh' (aka 'the Stone on the Lake', or Carlow). By the time of King John's reign, de Clahull has fallen from grace and a new castle was required, both to secure this strategic crossing point over the River Barrow and to keep the troublesome Leinster natives subdued. It's original occupant was William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, then the most influential and wealthy Anglo-Norman magnate in the British Isles.
For centuries the castle stood up to all manner of assault from MacMurrough chieftains and other renegades. Not even Cromwell's canons managed to knock down its mighty walls when they captured the castle in 1650.
Then, in 1814, along came a well-meaning scientist called Dr. Middleton who reckoned the castle would make for an excellent lunatic asylum. The only drawback was the size of the windows, a series of irregular wall-slits through which Norman archers once poked their yew-wood crossbows and riddled the backsides of rowdy McMurrough rebels. Dr. Middleton gamely tried to expand these slits into decent windows by placing gunpowder along their sills. It was a disaster. Three out of four walls of Carlow Castle were blown to smithereens. I don't know what happened to the doctor. Maybe he hasn't landed yet.
Amusing as it is, the destruction of Carlow Castle was a great pity and robbed the town of one of its finest architectural gems.
That said, somebody has done an earnest job on the maintenance of the one remaining stonewall. A formal avenue of pleached lime trees has been planted to the rear of the castle, lending a dignified French air to the Norman remains. The designer has evidently attempted to replicate the original castle with a series of avenues and circles where the original walls and turrets would have been. The project must have cost upwards of £50,000. The only downside on my last visit was that the shrubbery appeared to be poorly maintained, while the only accessible turret stank like a badger's bottom and boasted a carefully secreted mattress coated in bird shite sheets.
That aside, the remaining wall of Carlow Castle stands as an impressive and surreal monument to the Anglo-Norman occupation of Ireland.
And if you're feeling hungry, there's a fine Thai Restaurant across the road.

Carlow Court House
Built in 1830 by the Clonmel based architect William Vitruvius Morrison (1794 - 1838), Carlow Court House is considered one of the finest Neo-Classical buildings in Ireland. The Neo-Classical movement in Ireland gained much ground during the 19th century, particularly under James Gandon (who designed Dublin's Four Courts). The buildings were essentially Roman, and later Greek, in inspiration, based on notes made by individual architects during field trips to Italy and Greece or on the etchings of the great Piranesi and publications such as Antiquities of Athens by Stuart & Revett (1762, 1790). Morrison's father, Sir Richard Morrison developed this Neo-Classical style during the Napoleonic Wars, along with his arch-rival, Francis Johnston.
By the 1820s, the Greek Revival movement had taken a hold throughout Europe and the United States. The 1820s was a decade when minds were serious, sober and - if you ask me - downright glum. Maybe everyone was just plain exhausted by the previous 40 years of bloody revolution and warfare. At any rate, architects decided to reflect the new thought by designing structures to be … well, serious, sober and downright glum. Buildings were stripped of all unnecessary distractions or embellishments. Every aspect was clearly distinguished. There was no room for messing about. The net result was a heap of brand new, rather imposing buildings, generally Court Houses and Prisons, that wagged a stern finger at any who dared to mock or snort or chuckle without permission.
Carlow Court House was modelled on the Greek Parthenon. It is built in the more graceful Ionic style with 12 free-standing columns supporting the roof. Morrison was also responsible for the Court House in Tralee, County Kerry. Neither of these buildings are quite as stern as other Greek Revival structures, although they are no less imposing for this.
I got to know Carlow Court House quite well when summoned for jury service in the closing weeks of the 20th century. The case was to be a highly complex and tedious fraud issue. 200 potential jurors were imprisoned in the Court House for close on two days before the lawyers managed to swindle a dozen of us into volunteering. The main hazard of being a juror is that your company is meant to carry on paying your wage regardless of how many weeks you have to remain in court. I secured my freedom from such obilgations by reasoning that I was self-employed and, should the court case last longer than a week, I would be left with no alternative but to resort to fraud.

William Vitruvius Morrison
Born in Clonmel in 1794, William Vitruvius Morrison was the second son of Sir Richard Morrison, the Cork-born workaholic who designed so many of Ireland's houses, villas and public buildings in the early 19th century. [EG: Fota Island (Co. Cork) and Castlegar (Co. Galway)]. In contrast, W.V. Morrisson appears to have been rather a delicate, sensitive sort of soul, prone to depression, perhaps on account of his father's persistent refusal to regard him as anything more than a snivelling nuisance. At the age of 15 he produced a plan for Ballyheigue Castle in County Kerry. He studied abroad in England and later in Paris and Rome. It was in England that he came to admire the elegance of the Tudor and Jacobean styles, which he later adopted when his father finally allowed him on the designs of Kilruddery House (1820) in Bray for the Earl of Meath, Ballyfin (in Co. Laoise) for the Cootes and Fota Island (1825) in County Cork for the Earls of Barrymore. Of his own accord, W.V. Morrison was the architect responsible for Glenarm Castle (in Co. Antrim) for the Earl of Antrm, Mount Stewart (in County Down) for the Marquess of Londonderry, Baron's Court (in County Tyrone) for the Duke of Abercorn and Borris House (in County Carlow) for the MacMurrough-Kavanagh family. His public buildings include the County Court Houses of Carlow and Tralee, both completed in 1828, and the Ross Monument, Rostrevor, Co. Down (1826), a massive obelisk on an Egyptianizing base, considered one of the noblest memorials in Ireland.WV Morrison died aged 44 in 1838. His works were completed by his father, Sir Richard Morrison, who became first President of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland founded in 1839.

St. Patrick's College
One of the oldest Catholic seminaries in Ireland opened in 1795 to educate priests following a relaxation of the Penal Laws against Catholic education.

Carlow Cathedral
The Carlow Nationalist had a bit of craic a few years back when they published a photograph of the town's mighty Gothic Revival Cathedral (built between 1828 and 1833) with the famous spire carefully airbrushed out. It was April 1st and the story ran that the spire had been knocked down by a helicopter. Apparently certain old and devout readers of the paper damned near died of a heart attack at the news. And even the Vatican was on the blower protesting that this was all in very bad taste.
The Cathedral was one of the first Catholic churches to be built after Daniel O'Connell's success in securing Catholic Emancipation in 1829. The perpendicular semi-Gothic design is by Thomas Cobden, and indicates the beginning of a new age in Gothic Revival architecture set to sweep the British Isles on the eve of Queen Victoria's accession.

Sir John Macneill & Carlow Train Station

The station was built in 1846 to the design of Sir John Macneill (1793 - 1880), the Louth born civil engineer who had erected the massive passenger shed at Kingsbridge (Heuston Station) in Dublin a year earlier. A lieutenant in the Louth Militia from 1811 -1815, John Macneill had gone to England at the close of the Napoleonic Wars to find work as an engineer. He soon chanced to become one of Thomas Telford's principal assistants during that man's phenomenal era of road and bridge building in Scotland and England during the 1820s. Macneill has set himself up as a consultant engineer in 1834, with offices in London and Glasgow. His skill and application encouraged the House of Commons to commission him to undertake a survey of northern Ireland for the railways. Moving into the family home at Mount Pleasant, County Louth, he duly completed the Drogheda - Dublin line (later the Great Northern Railway) and, on the completion of the Kildare section of the Great Western & Southern Railway in 1844, he experienced the pleasure of having Her Majesty Queen Victoria gently attempting to slice his ears off and make him a knight.
He was 1st Professor of Civil Engineering at Trinity College Dublin from 1842 to 1852 and was later created a Fellow of the Royal Society. During his later years he went blind and retired. He died on 2nd March 1880 at Cromwell Road in South Kensington, London.
The station was built to welcome coal-faced passengers off the new Great Southern & Western Railway which arrived in Carlow in 1846. Macneill's penchant for Jacobean stepped gables are still in evidence today. Ain't it a crying shame that they don't make train stations, or indeed trains, like they used to.

Carlow Museum
Located on Centaur Street off the Haymarket and to the rear of the Town Hall, the museum contains a fine smattering of bits and bobs from Carlow's past including furniture, crockery, clothing, folk instruments and the trapdoor last used for public hanging outside Carlow Gaol in 1820 when 20,000 grizzly old hags showed up for the occasion. 20,000 people came to watch him die! And you thought Reality TV was bad. Open May - Sept, daily.

Local Heroes
John Tindal: This is the man who worked out why the sky is blue. I don't know what his answer was, but he did considerably better than a Finnish contemporary who wrote a long thesis maintaining that the sea level fell because there was a hole in the bottom of the ocean. There is now a pub called the John Tindal in his honour.
George Bernard Shaw: The connection may be tenuous but GBS's aunt and mothers' family came from Carlow. The Nobel Laureate also donated over a dozen proprieties to Carlow. Over the past 60 years, the income generated from these properties has generated funding for numerous projects undertaken by voluntary organizations, including the erection and maintenance of a Christmas Crib on the Court House steps in Carlow town. On a national scale Shaw and his wife donated funds and legacies (worth millions today) to various projects in Ireland (the Irish National Gallery being a major recipient). One of the houses he donated during his lifetime was the premises in Dublin Street, for use as educational / training facility for the youth of Carlow. For many years, the Technical School was housed on the premises and it later housed the Carlow County Library. A plaque by his aunt's house on Tullow Street describes Shaw as a "self-styled world betterer". He was, after all, the man who said all this "struggling and striving" to make the world a better place was well and good but then pointed out that "struggling and striving" is the wrong way to go about anything at all.
Ardattin schoolgirl Saoirse Ronan was nominated as best supporting actress in both the Oscar and Golden Globe nominations 2007 for her pivotal role in the Ian McEwan adaptation, 'Atonement'.

Clubbing It
When it comes to getting jiggy after dark, Carlow Town rocks. Amazing as it might seem to those who knew Carlow in the last century, Carlow Town has become the clubbing capital of … well, Carlow County at any rate.
The leader of the pack is The Foundry, located in the mighty Dinn Rhi (itself a wonderful looking pub-club that has evolved to be the focal point of the entire town). On Friday through Sunday, The Foundry offers three different floors, catering to the 3000 plus ravers, poppers and live band devotees who, by the coachload, flock into town from as far away as Dublin and Wexford. Other players are The Tower and Saints & Sinners of which I know sweet nothing yet.

Siucra, Athy Road
Smells are amazing things for transporting one back to the mysterious freedom of childhood. Musty old books. Chlorinated swimming pools. Fresh mown lawns. And, for me, sugar beet. About 15 miles from my home stands Carlow's "Siucra" Factory which has been churning up sugar beet since 1926. Napoleon Bonaparte invented sugar beet as a two-fingered gesture to the English who, following his conquest of Spain, had barred the export of sugar from the colonies to ze French Republic. A home grown sugar beet industry meant the French didn't have to import sugar in order to drink sweet café. Alas, they closed the factory down in 2005.
Another useless piece of trivia: Patrick and Emmet Bergin's father worked here during the 1950s and 1960s. He was an actor himself and got highly involved with the very first Eigse Arts Festivals. Emmet was a household name in Ireland for many years, playing silver-tongued Dick Moran in Ireland's long-running agri-soap "Glenroe". His brother Patrick had his 15 minutes stalking Julia Roberts in "Sleeping With the Enemy" before going head to head and losing against Kevin Costner in the summer of 1990 when two huge Robin Hood movies were released at the same time.
If you wish to know more, try www.irish-sugar.ie

Sadlly the Siucra factory was closed down in 2006. Its fate is presently under consideration.

Braun
The great big murky green toaster shaped building you see approaching Carlow from Dublin is a Braun manufacturing plant.

Carlow Brewing Company
Ireland is not yet famous for its micro-breweries. This is perhaps because Guinness has a rather bullying habit of buying them out the second they start looking like a threat. That said, the Carlow Brewing Company has survived and prospered in its decade of existence. O'Hara's Stout. Molings. Curim. They win awards at all the right shows and they are all very, very drinkable.

Browne's Hill Dolmen
Built as a royal burial place some 5000 years ago, this massive granite dolmen boasts the largest and most impressive capstone in Ireland at 100 tons. In fact, this is possibly the largest single manmade Neolithic formation in Europe.
I know its entirely irrelevant but the Browne's Hill dolmen is the reason why I became involved in "tourism". I was working for Carlow Tourism one summer many years back, assembling information on local historical curiosities. I particularly loved the dolmen, this mystical, inexplicable monument standing on its own surrounded by disinterested cattle and yawning sheep. Then I went away for a year. When I got back, the powers that be had stuck a pair of ugly Bruscar litter bins beside the dolmen, fenced it off and hammered a dreadful signboard depicting how life might have been for stone age dwellers beside it. I realised that this country requires guidance and so, five years later, I joined Trailblazer. Now I require guidance too.
As you walk to the dolmen, keep your eyes peeled for the famous "Carlow Fencing"- granite posts, V-shaped at the top, with granite slabs laid across, a common feature of the Carlow landscape in the 19th century.
Located 3km outside Carlow on the R726 Hacketstown Road.

Duckett's Grove
This majestic Gothic Revival ruin was originally home to the Duckett family, prosperous landowners of Cromwellian stock. The house was built in the mid-Georgian period but substantially modified and gothicized by Thomas Cobden into a Gothic Revival Castle later on. William Duckett died in 1908 leaving quarter of a million pounds which is roughly the equivalent to being able to purchase four stealth bombers and a Black Hawk in the modern age. Alas his widow Georgina Duckett became increasingly deranged and fearful of a Catholic conspiracy to kill her. She fell out with her only child, a daughter named Olive, who was then cut out of the will save for what was known as The Angry Shilling. The IRA occupied the house in 1922, after which it was sold to a conglomerate of local farmers. It burnt down in 1933. In 2005, the demesne was purchased by Carlow County Council who have stabilizeed the house and restored the gardens and stables. Hurrah. (Although the house really does make for a spectacular ruin).

With thanks to Michael Purcell.

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