Qualla: Carrick-on-Shannon

Carrick-on-Shannon: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonjobaker, CC BY-SA 4.0. The river bends here, and the town bends with it. Carrick-on-Shannon is built on one of the oldest fording places on the longest river in the British Isles - the spot where for thousands of years cattle, monks, soldiers and traders crossed the Shannon on foot at low water. Today the river is the spine of the town, dividing County Leitrim from County Roscommon, and the bridge has been built and rebuilt three times. The latest, a low arched stone span from 1846, carries the road into a small county town of four thousand seven hundred and forty-three people that is somehow the gateway to half the inland waterway system of Ireland.

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Image: Jonjobaker | CC BY-SA 4.0

Carrick-on-Shannon: Charter, Castle, and the Old Gaol

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit L S Wilson, CC BY-SA 2.0. Carrick-on-Shannon got its royal charter and its own town seal in 1607, in the same wave of plantation-era charters that James I scattered across the freshly subdued north and midlands. On older maps the place appears as Carrick Drumrusk or Carrikdrumrusk - the anglicised form of...

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Image: L S Wilson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Carrick-on-Shannon: Guinness Up the River

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gavigan, CC BY-SA 3.0. Until the early 1800s, the head of navigation on the Shannon was downstream at Drumsna. Then, in the 1840s, came the great engineering push: extensive dredging, the cutting of the Jamestown Canal, new locks at Drumsna and Knockvicar, and at Carrick itself a new bridge in 1846 - t...

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Image: Gavigan | CC BY-SA 3.0

Carrick-on-Shannon: Two Churches and a Harpist's Lane

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Christophe Krief, CC BY-SA 4.0. St Mary's, on the Main Street, is the town's Catholic parish church - Neo-Gothic, dedicated on 19 October 1879, designed by the Dublin architect W. H. Hague. Father Thomas Fitzgerald, who saw the church built, is buried in front of the Blessed Sacrament Altar in the chancel he co...

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Image: Christophe Krief | CC BY-SA 4.0

Carrick-on-Shannon: The Dock and the Rowing Club

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Djm-leighpark, CC BY-SA 4.0. The old courthouse on the quay was rebuilt in 2005 as The Dock - an arts centre with a theatre, galleries, artists' studios, a coffee shop and the Leitrim Design House. Every July the town fills for the Carrick Water Music Festival; every April for Phase One, a festival of modern...

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Image: Djm-leighpark | CC BY-SA 4.0