Mines ParisTech English Class

PAUL JENNEPIN

CARRICK-ON-SUIR
A glimpse into Irelands history
Mines ParisTech English Class

SOMMAIRE

INTRODUCTION
When you think about Ireland, you may imagine a field full of shamrocks, a delicate
harp, a great pint of stout beer or an intense rugby game. But first of all Ireland is a huge
island. What does this obvious characteristic of Ireland has to do with Carrick-on-Suir, a
small town in County Tipperary that lies on both banks of the River Suir, just next to the
point where the borders of counties Tipperary, Kilkenny and Waterford meet ? After all, there
is no island in the town of Carrick-on-Suir !

However, from its foundation up to the early

19th century, the town was an island settlement.
The waters of tributaries namely Lingaun, Pil, Glasha
and Glen encircled to enter the Suir from east to
west. It stood on an island in the huge island of
Ireland. An island in an island Just as if the small
developing town of Carrick-on-Suir was a small
reproduction of the huge isle of Ireland Just as if
Carrick-on-Suir used to be an island in
we could find in the little island settlement of
an island
Carrick-on-Suir a small scale echo of the whole Irish
country !

Carrick-on-Suir comes from the Irish translation of Carraig na Siuire which means
Rock of the Suir. Assuming that Carrick-on-Suir was an island, we could see it as a great
rock in the middle of the River Suir, a great rock in the middle of a continuous flow of Irish
history and culture. That continuous flow of historical and cultural fluid from time to time
leaves some mark on the Rock of the Suir, slowly changing the shape of the rock, taking
part in the construction of what Carrick-on-Suir is today. The Rock of the Suir also marks
the river of Irish history and culture, it adds some minerals to it, modifying the composition of
the flow. It partly models that continuous Irish flow, the Rock of the Suir changes Irish
culture and history. Lets then have a glimpse, through the magnifying glass of History, to the
relations between Carrick-on-Suir and the Irish history and culture !
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A HISTORICAL JOURNEY IN CARRICK-ON-SUIR

A HISTORICAL JOURNEY
IN CARRICK-ON-SUIR
In order to do so, lets have a little journey through the town. We will start our tour in The
Fairgreen Market, which is in the very center of the town. That is where in 1242 Matthew
FitzGriffin, lord of Knocktopher in county Kilkenny and owner of the manor of Carrick,
granted to the people of the town the right to hold a fair. That simple event is the first notice
of a town on the island ! From this time on and for many centuries the town was known as
Carraickmagriffin, i.e. Carraig mhic Griffin FitzGriffins Rock. The little island was definitely
the most suitable and most likely site in those days when a good river was not just another
waterway but a highway as indeed the Suir was up to the 20th century.
It appears that the original town was very small, consisting principally of a main street which
curved roughly parallel to the Suir in a direction approximately north-west to north-east.
There was a lane to the river from this street, where the public oven stood still known as
Oven Lane, which is the next stop of our tour ! Here bread was baked to avoid the fire-
hazard posed by wooden houses with thatched roofs and large cooking-fires inside them.
Notice that houses where at the time mainly made out of
wood and roofs out of thatch, like in the rest of Ireland.
To Oven Lane came the ferry across the Suir, from the
road that led from the coast. The town seemed to follow
the typical Anglo-Norman street-plan of two
thoroughfares crossing each other forming quadrants.
As a matter of fact, during the 12th century the
Normans invaded a great part of Ireland, and specifically
the actual location of Carrick-on-Suir. We could
therefore say that Ireland (at least the most powerful
people of the country) modeled the first draft of Carrick-
on-Suir. Carrick was one of seven walled towns in
County Tipperary developed by the Anglo Normans. The progression of the invasion of
Normas in 1300
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A HISTORICAL JOURNEY IN CARRICK-ON-SUIR

In 1315, King Edward II granted the town and manor of Carrickmagriffin to Edmund Butler,
who became known as Earl of Carraig. With the River Suir, the town grew in stature during
this medieval period and developed into a thriving market town. Carrick was the largest
town in the county with 36 acres of land enclosed by the town wall. We can in fact see parts
of the town wall in the Castleview Tennis Club area, which is the next place to visit of our
journey. The town was served by two mills, both powered by the waters of the Glasha. One
was where the West wall reached towards the River Suir and was served by a mill-race from
the western Glasha. In 1320 there is a reference to a new mill-pond on the Glasha in the
area where Mill Street, our next stop, is today. A mill stood there up to the 19th century. The
Irish country counts many wonderful mills, which were an important part of the industry
back in the Middle Age and are today preserved by The Society for the Preservation of
Ancient and Traditional Irish Mills. In 1309, Edmund Butler came to Carrick and in 1315 he
was made Earl of Carraig. The Butlers were to become very influential in the subsequent
history of the town. Edmund Butler had a castle built on the South side of the river on high
ground, called Carraig Bheag, the little rock. In 1336 James Butler, son and heir of Edmund
and later first Earl of Ormond, granted the castle and the site to the Franciscans, for a friary.
Tipperary Historical Journal 1992 21 [pp 186-196] Patrick C. Power
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A HISTORICAL JOURNEY IN CARRICK-ON-SUIR

Around the friary in Carrickbeg grew a little hamlet, which has always been seen as part of
the larger town. Part of the friary church still stands and is used as the parish church of
Carrkickbeg, which is the next stop of our tour. At that time, the Franciscans were in fact
expanding into Ireland. If Dublin is usually taken as the original settlement, the Franciscans
expanded from there in 1232 into Kilkenny, Waterford, Wexford, Drogheda, Athlone, Cork,
Ennis, Limerick, Dundalk, Castledermot, Carrickfergus, Claregalway, New Ross,
Multyfarnham, Nenagh, Ardfert, Kildare, Armagh and, by 1265, Cashel. Indeed, by the
middle of the fourteenth century 45 or 46 friaries had been founded in Ireland ! The Irish
history shapes again the development of Carrick-on-Suir. In the middle of the 15th century,
the town was ruled above all by Edmund Mac Richard Butler, who was known as Richard
the Builder, a nickname that suited him well : he had the bridge built and the town
extended. He also had the river-castle built. Although we have already crossed it, the Old
Bridge, as we call it today, is our next stop. It is probably one of the most handsome
bridges Ireland. You may remember that Carrick-on-Suir means the Rock of the Suir. I
should add that it is not any rock : the soil of the north of the island is made of upper
limestone, a great stone for constructions.
When we went to Miller Street, we walked
about 100 meters in Greystone Street. As a
matter of fact, the name Greystone records the
presence of limestone rock above the surface
of the ground in the 18th century. The soils of
South-East Tipperary were mainly upper
Geological Survey of Carrick-on-Suir led
limestone, so stone-quarries flourished out
by W.L. Willson and G.V. Du Noyer in 1857.
there. That is why the Old Bridge was built in Blue color represents upper limestone
limestone. It had a tower towards its centre,
which was stil occupied in 1799. Today its ground-plan alone remains incorporated in the
parapets. As mentioned before, Richard the Builder also had the river castle built. Sited
on rocks in the river, it had four towers and a semi-circular docking area towards the river-
centre, which was entired through a watergate. An interesting picture of the town of
Carrickmagriffin can be glimpsed in the Ormond papers of the 16th century. As well as usual
wooden dwellings, there is a first reference in 1529 to a stone house, situated south of the
Main Street. This house shows that the materials used for the construction of houses were
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A HISTORICAL JOURNEY IN CARRICK-ON-SUIR

slowly becoming more and more stone (and less wood), as it was already the case in many
places of Ireland. At that point, Carrick-on-Suir slowly followed the Iris path in terms of
construction. But that was about to change. In 1565 Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond, had a
Tudor manor-house built as an addition to his castle. Lets see it by moving to the Ormond
Castle ! By now the castle was no longer a river-castle except in the docking area ; so the
new building was joined to the landward part of the castle. And that manor-house was on
advance upon his time. It was unique in Ireland. It had lightsome windows on both floors
and brick was used in the construction of the chimneys and some interior walls. The ceilings
and walls were ornamented with stucco-work. There was one other construction method
which appears in the town for the first time at the manor-house. This was the use of brick in
a few interior walls within a framework of timbers. In the construction field, thanks to the
manor-house, Carrick-on-Suir stands as a forerunner in Ireland ! The roof-timbers, however,
had the strength and appearance of ship-carpentry work, and lack any of the delicate
craftwork seen in English houses of the same period. On those days, it was usual to use
thatch even on the roofs of towerhouses, but slates might have been used. However they
are mentioned for the first time in the latter half of the 17th century and the document, a
letter from the Duke of Ormond to the duke from the Hague (Netherlands), suggests that
slates may not have been as yet the normal roof-covering of houses in the town. The first
stone-houses of the 18th century were practically all on the south side of the Main Street. Of

The Ormond Castle today

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A HISTORICAL JOURNEY IN CARRICK-ON-SUIR

these about a dozen still stand, some still with the windows shallowly set into the walls.
Limestone was the building material, with some interior walls built of the wood-and-brick
framework described above for Carrick manor-house, which has definitely been a model for
the whole Irish country. One house stands as an exception : it is the only known Georgian
house in the town. It was built by the Walls of Coolnamuck in the 18th century, and was
known as the Red House from its bricks, unique for a town-house. It still stands as part of
the Mercy Convent, but is plastered over.
The next important development in the town was the construction of quays along the Suir
side, promptly followed by the building of the railway line,
which reached the town in 1852. It was part of the
permanent way from Limerick to Waterford of the Great
Southern & Western Railway. Still known today as the
premier line, the Great Southern & Western Railway
(GS&WR) was the largest railway system in Ireland. Again,
Ireland, through its history of rail transport, invaded Carrick-
on-Suir and modeled its means of transports. In 1866 Isaac
Butt MP discovered some money for public works in the
British Treasury since Famine times, and this was re- GS&WR coat of arms, Irish
allocated for the building of a public park in Carrick-on-Suir. State Coach

With this, and some money received in donations, the work

on the park began and was completed in 1868. The Great Famine and Trevelyan limiting the
english food aid program during this period must have left some money when it comes to
British aid to Ireland. Carrick-on-Suirs history meets again the whole countrys history.
During the 19th and 20th centuries the two canals (west and north) of the Glasha were
sand-covered and Carrick-on-Suir was no island settlement anymore. The last great
building in Carrick-on-Suir in the 19th century was Dillon Bridge across the Suir, still
popularly known as the New Bridge, which is our next and last stop. The bridge was named
after James Dillon of the Irish Parliamentary Party, whose supporters in the town were
virulent opponents of the bridge ! During the 19th fishing and some weaving provided the
main sources of income in Carrick-on-Suir. There was also the graving dock of the Kehoes,
which had been in operation in 1799 and which finally closed in the 1920s. Thats where the
lighters and the yawls were built for the inland waterways network which stretched into the
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A HISTORICAL JOURNEY IN CARRICK-ON-SUIR

midlands of Ireland. Carrick-on-Suir participated in that way to the development of the Irish
country. However by the latter part of the 19th century the only industry prospering in
Carrick was the brewing business of Richard Feehan. They brew ales, porter, and stout,
and do a considerable trade in ales. Nothing but malt and hops are used, and the firm make
all their own malt, and purchase all their barley locally, principally from the farmers upon the
County Kilkenny side, except a little foreign barley which they mix with the home barley for
the production of their light ales. They have a wholesale whiskey business in connection
with the brewery. Their business is personally superintended by Mr. R. B. Feehan, a
thoroughly practical brewer who obtained his experience in England. explains us the
chapter about The brewing industry in Ireland of the book Ireland Industrial and Agricultural.
In the 1930s there were no more thatched roofs in Carrick-on-Suir. The 1950s were
associated with the major depression of the time which was combined with large scale
unemployment and emigration. The great slum-clearance schemes of Carrick-on-Suir
began with housing families from the lanes in Carrickbeg after 1932. The local limestone
was no longer used, concrete replacing it. Tiles were used on the roofs, although there were
excellent slate-quarries outside the town in the Lingaun valley. As a matter of fact, the
history of the materials used to build houses and roofs in Carrick-on-Suir is a pretty good
image of what it has been in Ireland.
The early history of banking in Carrick also seems to mirror the 2008-2011 Irish banking
crisis as in 1793 the Hayden & Rivers bank went bankrupt and similar fate was to befall
Sadliers Bank in 1856 and the Sausse Bank in 1860. In 1835, the first branch of the
National Bank was opened in Carrick-on-Suir and it is still there in 2009 as a branch of the
Bank of Ireland.

National Bank, Carrick-on-Suir

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A HISTORICAL JOURNEY IN CARRICK-ON-SUIR

Our tour in Carrick-on-Suir :

1. Fairgreen Market

2. Oven Lane

3. Main Street

4. Castleview Lawn Tennis Club

5. Greystone Street

6. Mill Street

7. The Friary Church

8. Old Bridge
New bridge

9. Ormond Castle

10. The New Bridge

Our historical journey in Carrick-on-Suir

Mines ParisTech English Class

SPORTS AND MUSIC FROM CARRICK-ON-SUIR

SPORTS AND MUSIC

FROM CARRICK-ON-SUIR
But history is not the only thing that brings Ireland and Carrick-on-Suir nearer. The town is
famous for its importance in national sports. As a matter of fact, the 1904 All-Ireland Senior
Hurling Championship final was played in Carrick-on-Suir on Maurice Davins land. Kilkenny
defeated Cork by a single point.
Sean Kelly, an Irish former professional road bicycle racer, comes from Carrick-on-Suir. From
turning professional in 1977 until his retirement in 1994, he won nine monument classics
and 193 professional races. He is one of the most successful road cyclists of the 1980s
and is known as one of the finest riders of all times !
Carrick-on-Suir also participated to the spreading of Irish folk, thanks to the Clancy brothers
: they came from Carrick-on-Suir ! The group was in fact famous for its often lively
arrangements of old Irish ballads, rebel and drinking songs, sea shanties, and other
traditional music. It paved the way for an Irish folk boom with groups like The Dubliners and
The Wolfe Tones. So Carrick-on-Suir has a lot to do in the worldwide diffusion of traditional
(although a little bit rearranged) Irish music !

The Cancy Brothers Sean Kelly

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CONCLUSION

CONCLUSION
To conclude, you may know the Carrick knot or bend ? This knot is the logo of the District
Council of a seaside town in Cornwall. Its name ? Carrick ! Enquiries revealed that its origin
was late 18th century. However, the Carrick Knot is also without doubt the symbol of the
tradition and history of the towns association with the tidal waters of the River Suir. You may
remember it from our visit of the Ormond Castle. It was imprinted in stone on the huge
fireplace of the main Banqueting Hall of the Ormond Castle since the 16th Century. The
open ended loops as used by the great boatmen, fishermen and Sailors of the Realm is
clear for all to see. So when it comes to the Carrick Knot, Carrick-on-Suir had stolen a
march to those nasty British from Carrick by approximately 200 years ! And whatever shows
the superiority of Ireland over Britain can be seen as a good point for the whole Irish country,
which is probably very grateful to Carrick-on-Suir for this huge victory against England !

The Carrick Knot or Bend

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SOURCES

SOURCES
Instruction, Ireland. Dept. Of Agriculture And Technical. (2013). Ireland Industrial and Agricultural. London:
Forgotten Books. (Original work published 1902) : http://www.forgottenbooks.com/readbook_text/
Ireland_Industrial_and_Agricultural_1000196525/621

Castles In Ireland-The Ormond Castle-A Love Story, by Colm and Susanna : http://www.enjoy-irish-
culture.com/castles-in-ireland-ormond-castle.html

The official website of Carrick-on-Suir : http://www.carrickonsuir.info/carrick-on-suir-tourism/history?

showall=1&limitstart=

Ask about Ireland : http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/sports-recreation/postcards-of-ireland/

tipperarys-historical-pos/carrick-on-suir/

The Dowleys of Carrick-on-Suir : http://www.dowleyhistory.com/the-town-of-carrick-on-suir/

Genealogy Pro : http://genealogypro.com/articles/Irish-history.html

Irelands history in maps : http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~irlkik/ihm/index.htm

History Ireland (about the franciscans in medieval Ireland) : http://www.historyireland.com/medieval-

history-pre-1500/two-nations-one-order-the-franciscans-in-medieval-ireland/

The Society for the Preservation of Ancient and Traditional Irish Mills : http://www.millsofireland.org/#!
about-us/c24f1

Carrick On Suir Town Walls Conservation Management Interpretation Plan : http://www.tipperarycoco.ie/

sites/default/files/Publications/Carrick%20on%20Suir%20Town%20Walls%20Conservation
%20Management%20%26%20Interpretation%20Plan%202013.pdf

Wikipedia :

Carrick-on-Suir : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrick-on-Suir

History of Ireland : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ireland

Ireland : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland

Great Southern and Western Railway : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Great_Southern_and_Western_Railway

Tipperary Historical Journal 1992. Carrick-on-Suir: Its Origins and Growth. Patrick C. Power : http://
www.tipperarylibraries.ie/ths/pdfs/journals/1992/1992%2021%20%5Bpp%20186-196%5D%20Patrick
%20C.%20Power.pdf

Histoire de lIrlande. Jean Guiffan. ditions Hatier. 1992.

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SOURCES

Irish historical geological maps (geological maps of Carrick-on-Suir) : http://www.geologicalmaps.net/

IrishHistMaps/map.cfc?method=list&series=I1inch&findtext=&start=300

Written listening to (so I guess they are part of the work) :

Caleno Custure Me (I am a Girl from the Suir Side) by Susan McKeown

The Clancy Brothers