Qualla: Castlecomer https://qualla.com/castlecomer en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:12 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/6/u/castlecomer-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Castlecomer https://qualla.com/castlecomer Castlecomer: Introduction https://qualla.com/castlecomer/ Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Christopher Wandesforde came from Yorkshire and arrived in Ireland in the 1630s with an unusual instruction. The Lord Lieutenant had granted him an estate in northern Kilkenny that included an entire coalfield, and Wandesforde set about designing the town on it. Local tradition says he modelled the layout on a place in Italy called Alsinore - probably Asinara, the island off Sardinia. Whatever the source, the lime trees and the Georgian houses around the market square at Castlecomer still have a faintly Mediterranean idea of public space at their heart. Underneath them, for three hundred years, men cut anthracite out of the dark.

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/6/u/castlecomer-wp/gc6u-castlecomer-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Castlecomer: The Planter's Town https://qualla.com/castlecomer/ Photo credit A.-K. D., CC0. The name means "castle at the confluence" - Caislean an Chomair in Irish, for the meeting of the Dinin and Cloghogue rivers. Wandesforde, granted the estate by Charles I's Lord Lieutenant Thomas Wentworth, recruited Yorkshire settlers for their skills in ironwork, weaving, potter...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/6/u/castlecomer-wp/gc6u-castlecomer-the-planters-town.mp3 0:06 2 full Castlecomer: Three Hundred Years of Anthracite https://qualla.com/castlecomer/ Photo credit A.-K. D., CC0. The Leinster Coalfield runs from northern Kilkenny into Carlow and Laois, and Castlecomer sat in its center. Mining began in the mid-seventeenth century with iron ore; the smelting furnaces cleared huge tracts of oak forest. Then the coal seams beneath the shale were found, and t...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/6/u/castlecomer-wp/gc6u-castlecomer-three-hundred-years-of-anthracite.mp3 0:06 3 full Castlecomer: The Amphibians of Jarrow https://qualla.com/castlecomer/ Photo credit Sarah777, Public domain. In the 1860s, a scholar named William Booking Brownrigg came to Castlecomer to look at the plant fossils preserved in the coal shales. He found something else. The miners had been bringing up the bones of something far more interesting - ancient amphibians, dating from the Carbon...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/6/u/castlecomer-wp/gc6u-castlecomer-the-amphibians-of-jarrow.mp3 0:06 4 full Castlecomer: Wellies on New Year's Day https://qualla.com/castlecomer/ Photo credit Laurel Lodged, CC BY-SA 4.0. On New Year's Day, the town gathers for the Castlecomer Wellie Race. The tradition began in 1978, when men from the Powley hills above the town - playing cards on St. Stephen's Day - decided they needed to work off the Christmas excess by running a cross-country course in welling...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/6/u/castlecomer-wp/gc6u-castlecomer-wellies-on-new-years-day.mp3 0:06 5 full