Qualla: Thomastown, County Kilkenny

Thomastown, County Kilkenny: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrea Doyle McCabe, CC BY-SA 4.0. Thomas FitzAnthony was a mercenary from Wales who came over with the Norman invasion of Ireland and ended up as Seneschal of Leinster. In the early 13th century he chose a crossing point of the River Nore and built a town to his own name. He died in 1229. Today, eight centuries later, the town he founded is still called Thomastown, still sits where the salmon and trout run, and is still a market town with a name that carries oddly far -- to Texas, where it produced an empresario who helped settle the Republic, and to philosophy, where its hinterland produced one of the most original British minds of the 18th century.

Image: Andrea Doyle McCabe | CC BY-SA 4.0

Thomastown, County Kilkenny: FitzAnthony's Town

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 4.0. Before Thomastown there was Grennan -- the older Irish settlement whose name means Sunny Place. When William Earl Marshall, son-in-law of Strongbow, granted a large area of the region to Thomas FitzAnthony, the Anglo-Norman built his own fortifications on the high ground above th...

Image: Gerd Eichmann | CC BY-SA 4.0

Thomastown, County Kilkenny: Cromwell, Mills, and the River

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Edward, Public domain. In 1650 Cromwell's army arrived. Grennan Castle was laid siege to, and after two days the defenders surrendered. Several mill buildings in good condition can still be seen upstream from the bridge, surviving from the era when grain milling was the dominant rural industry along th...

Image: Edward | Public domain

Thomastown, County Kilkenny: Berkeley and the Texan Empresario

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Tolivero~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Dysart Castle, close to Thomastown, is reputed to have been the birthplace of Bishop George Berkeley -- the Irish philosopher whose immaterialism shaped 18th-century thought and whose name was attached to the Californian city, and then the university, that bears it today. Berkele...

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Tolivero~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Thomastown, County Kilkenny: Mount Juliet, John Martyn, and Hurling

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. Modern visitor attractions cluster within easy reach: Jerpoint Abbey, the ruined 12th-century Cistercian house just outside town; Kilfane Glen gardens with its picturesque waterfall; and Mount Juliet Golf Course, the Jack Nicklaus-designed course that hosted the 2002 and 2004 WGC...

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