Qualla: Templemore

Templemore: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sheila1988, CC0. If you join An Garda Siochana, the Irish national police, you will spend your training at the Garda Siochana College in Templemore. Twelve thousand recruits and refreshers walk these classrooms every year. The town has been training people in uniform since 1809, when Sir John Carden donated seventeen acres to the British army for the Richmond barracks - later renamed McCan Barracks - on streets given victory names from the Peninsular War: Talavera Place, Vimeiro Mall, Regent Bridge. The Empire has gone. The discipline has stayed. The Devil's Bit mountains stand a few kilometers north, with their famous gap where, according to legend, the devil bit out a chunk of rock and spat it south, where it landed as the Rock of Cashel.

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Image: Sheila1988 | CC0

Templemore: Saint Sheelan's Church

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sheila1988, CC0. Templemore means "big church" in Irish - and yet there is no townland of that name. The town is built in Kiltillane, which means "Saint Sheelan's Church." According to tradition, a holy man named Silean (anglicized to Sheelan) walked through Tipperary in the fifth century, possib...

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Image: Sheila1988 | CC0

Templemore: Cardens of Cheshire

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sarah777 at English Wikipedia, Public domain. After 1169 the Normans arrived, and the Butlers - the future Earls of Ormond - made Tipperary their palatinate. In 1450, James Butler, 4th Earl of Ormond, built the Blackcastle in what is now the Town Park: a Butler stronghold tied to lands later leased to the Purcells of Loughmo...

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Image: Sarah777 at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Templemore: The Apparitions of 1920

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stefan Riesner, CC BY-SA 3.0. In late summer 1920, in the middle of the Irish War of Independence, Templemore became briefly famous. A young man named James Walsh reported visions of the Virgin Mary, and water seeping from a flagstone in his cottage was said to cure illness. Pilgrims arrived by train. Newspap...

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Image: Stefan Riesner | CC BY-SA 3.0

Templemore: The Bracken Brothers

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nought12, CC BY-SA 4.0. Templemore has produced two unexpected figures of twentieth-century history. Joseph Kevin Bracken, born here, was one of the original founders of the Gaelic Athletic Association in 1884 - the organization that codified hurling and Gaelic football into the cornerstones of modern I...

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Image: Nought12 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Templemore: A Working Town

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Christopher2010xxx, CC BY-SA 3.0. Today the town's population is just over two thousand. The Garda College sits on the southern edge, where the old barracks once held 767 unmarried British soldiers and 27 officers' horses. The Town Park - the old Carden demesne - holds the GAA grounds, a pitch-and-putt course, an...

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Image: Christopher2010xxx | CC BY-SA 3.0