County Carlow Guide (Ceatharlach)
“The Barrowsiders” - in the province of Leinster. County town: Carlow.
Ireland’s second-smallest county, on the River Barrow, with a 5,000-year-old dolmen at Brownshill.
One of Ireland’s smallest counties, Carlow sits in the fertile valley of the River Barrow in the south-east. It’s quietly historic - the 5,000-year-old Brownshill Dolmen has one of the heaviest capstones in Europe - and increasingly known for good food, river walks and a lively county town. Easy to overlook, and all the better for it.
Wedged between the Blackstairs Mountains and the fertile valley of the River Barrow, Carlow is Ireland's second-smallest county, yet it punches well above its size in history. Granite from its uplands built much of Leinster, and the county's ancient nickname, the Dolmen County, comes from the Browneshill portal tomb outside Carlow town, whose colossal capstone is reckoned the heaviest in Europe. The Barrow, Ireland's second-longest river, threads the county from north to south, and its towpath, once walked by horses hauling grain barges to Waterford port, is now one of the country's loveliest long-distance trails.
Carlow town grew rich on milling and malting, and in 1926 it became the home of the Irish Free State's first sugar beet factory, an industry that shaped local farming for seventy years. The county has a strong scholarly streak too: Carlow College, founded in the 1780s, is among the oldest Catholic institutions of higher learning in Ireland, and the town now hosts a campus of the South East Technological University. For visitors tracing roots, the graveyards of Leighlinbridge, St Mullins and Clonegal sit in some of the most tranquil river scenery in the country.
Cities, towns and villages in Carlow
- Carlow - The county town on the Barrow, home to Carlow College, the Delta Sensory Gardens and the ruins of a 13th-century Norman castle.
- Tullow - A market town on the Slaney known as the gateway to the Blackstairs and the home club of rugby star Sean O'Brien, the Tullow Tank.
- Bagenalstown - Officially Muine Bheag, an elegant planned town founded by Walter Bagenal, who intended it to be a Versailles on the Barrow.
- Borris - A handsome Georgian estate village beneath Mount Leinster, seat of the MacMurrough Kavanaghs and famed for its 16-arch railway viaduct.
- Leighlinbridge - A Barrow-side village with one of Ireland's earliest Norman castles and the birthplace of physicist John Tyndall.
- St Mullins - A riverside monastic settlement founded by St Moling, burial place of the kings of Leinster including Art MacMurrough Kavanagh.
- Clonegal - A picture-postcard village at the end of the Wicklow Way, home to the atmospheric 17th-century Huntington Castle.
- Rathvilly - A trim village under Mount Leinster that has repeatedly won Ireland's Tidy Towns competition.
- Hacketstown - A hillside town near the Wicklow border, ancestral home of the family of 1916-era patriot Kevin Barry.
- Myshall - A quiet village at the foot of Mount Leinster, birthplace of American publishing magnate Peter Fenelon Collier.
Famous people from Carlow
- John Tyndall - The Leighlinbridge-born physicist who explained why the sky is blue and was a pioneer in understanding the greenhouse effect.
- William Dargan - Born near Carlow town in 1799, the great engineer who built most of Ireland's early railways and funded the exhibition that led to the National Gallery.
- Saoirse Ronan - The four-time Oscar-nominated actress who grew up in Ardattin, near Tullow, and has often spoken of her Carlow childhood.
- Myles Keogh - A soldier from Leighlinbridge who fought for the Pope and the Union Army before dying with Custer at Little Bighorn in 1876.
- Samuel Haughton - A Carlow-born polymath of Trinity College who made contributions to geology, medicine and mathematics in the 19th century.
- Sean O'Brien - The Tullow-born flanker who won multiple Six Nations titles with Ireland and toured with the British and Irish Lions.
- Peter Fenelon Collier - The Myshall emigrant who founded Collier's Weekly, one of America's most influential magazines.
- Patrick Francis Moran - The Leighlinbridge-born cardinal who became Archbishop of Sydney and a towering figure in Australian Catholic history.
- Kevin Barry - The 18-year-old medical student executed in 1920, whose family farm was at Tombeagh near Hacketstown, where he spent much of his youth.
Did you know?
- The capstone of the Browneshill Dolmen outside Carlow town weighs an estimated 100 tonnes and is widely regarded as the heaviest in Europe.
- Carlow was one of the first towns in Ireland or Britain to have electric street lighting, powered from 1891 by a hydroelectric scheme at Milford Mills on the Barrow.
- Ireland's first sugar beet factory opened in Carlow in 1926 and operated until 2005, earning the county a central place in Irish agricultural history.
- At roughly 897 square kilometres, Carlow is the second-smallest of Ireland's 32 counties, larger only than Louth.
- Mount Leinster, on the Carlow-Wexford border, rises to 795 metres and its summit transmitter mast serves much of the south-east.
- The Black Castle at Leighlinbridge, begun in 1181, guards one of the oldest bridging points on the River Barrow, with the present bridge dating from 1320.
- Carlow College, established in the 1780s and opened in 1793, is one of the oldest centres of Catholic higher education in Ireland.
- The Duckett's Grove estate near Carlow town features a dramatic Gothic Revival ruin that has become one of Ireland's most photographed abandoned houses.
Surnames from Carlow: Kavanagh · Nolan · Whelan · Dowling · Hayden · Bagenal · Bolger