Qualla: County Carlow

County Carlow: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sarah777, Public domain. A hundred tonnes of granite balanced on three uprights. The Brownshill Dolmen has been sitting on the Hacketstown Road for somewhere between five and six thousand years, and its capstone is reputed to be the heaviest in Europe. Carlow is the second-smallest of Ireland's 32 counties and the third-least populous, and yet across these modest 89,650 hectares the prehistoric inhabitants assembled more dolmens per square kilometre than almost anywhere else on the island. Locals call it the Dolmen County. The nickname is earned the old-fashioned way - in stone.

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Image: Sarah777 | Public domain

County Carlow: The Granite County

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stephen Hanafin, CC BY-SA 2.0. Roughly 70 percent of Carlow sits on granite. Four hundred million years ago, when the Iapetus Ocean closed and Baltica collided with Laurentia, a vast pluton of magma cooled slowly beneath the seafloor that became Leinster. The mountains that once stood above it have long since ...

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Image: Stephen Hanafin | CC BY-SA 2.0

County Carlow: Capital, Briefly, of Ireland

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. Carlow has spent most of its history being smaller than its strategic importance. In 1361 the English Crown made Carlow the capital of the Lordship of Ireland in a doomed attempt to halt the Gaelic Resurgence; the capital sat thirteen kilometres north of the permanent residence o...

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Image: Andreas F. Borchert | CC BY-SA 4.0

County Carlow: Gentry Country

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit thejmii, CC BY-SA 3.0. By the late 19th century, Carlow had a greater concentration of country houses per hectare than any other rural county in Ireland. Just 21 families owned almost 40 percent of the land. Historian Jimmy O'Toole calls it 'the most gentrified county in Ireland.' Names like Browne's H...

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Image: thejmii | CC BY-SA 3.0

County Carlow: Two Rebellions and a Sugar Beet Factory

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The Capuchin Order, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1798 the Battle of Carlow opened the rebellion in the southeast, and the months that followed were marked by sectarian killings, raids on Catholic homes by the local Yeomanry, and the activities of Reverend Robert Rochfort of Clogrennan House - 'the slashing parson' - who supe...

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Image: The Capuchin Order | CC BY-SA 3.0

County Carlow: Living Landscape

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sarah777, Public domain. The Wicklow Way ends in Clonegal in the county's northeast corner after crossing 131 kilometres of bog and forest. The Barrow Way follows the river for 100 kilometres south to St Mullin's, where the seventh-century monastery of Saint Moling still sleeps beneath its high crosses. ...

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Image: Sarah777 | Public domain