About Carlow - town and county

Development plans are to make this page into an index to a series of pages about Carlow. Planned topics are famous people with local connections, history, commercial information, tourism and leisure activities, archeology and news/current events. If there is any demand, we will try to include genealogical data. There is some Carlow genealogical information in TCD's Genealogical Guide to Ireland and the Carlow County Heritage Society has lots of data but lacks resources to answer many queries.
If you have any suggestions, let me know.
There are pages on: We also have this map of carlow and the region.
Click Carlow Castle for the full picture! There is a better one on the Carlow Town page. Here is a picture of Carlow in the 1890's from the Lawrence collection. Note the electric street light - Carlow was the first town in the British Isles to be lit by electricity. It was generated at Milford, 4 miles downriver, where the old generating station, with new plant, is now supplying electricity for a local studfarm with the suplus going to the national grid. The low building in front of the old mill houses the generators.

The old gaol in Carlow is at the corner of Barrack Street and Kennedy Avenue. For many years it was home to Thompson's Hanover Engineering Works, but has recently been completely redeveloped as a shopping centre. One of the original features of the gaol which has been retained is the governor's residence, now in the middle of the roofed- in shopping centre.

The residence, a three storey building of limestone ashlar with granite dressings has recently become a Bewley's Cafe. The main entrance to the cafe is through the original doorway of the old building.

Here is a poem entitled Christmas in Carlow which was found in the 1954 edition of Carloviana.

to Institute of Technology Carlow
AK 30th April 1998