Canon O’Hanlon is best known in Laois for his History of the Queen’s County, a two-volume work outlining the history of County Laois from the earliest times to the 20th century. Expertly researched and annotated, this is an invaluable reference work. Although an academic historian Canon O’Hanlon also valued the folklore of his native county...Read More

Article by James G. Ryan on an interesting item in the De Vesci papers held in the National Library of Ireland, being a list of people who purchased Indian meal from the De Vesci Estate in July 1801Read More

Estate papers are an intriguing mix of the myriad documents generated by a family and their staff in the management of their estate, often over several generations. The contents typically comprise rentals, deeds, letters, staff records, maps and wills. Within this mix of trivia, a document can occasionally be found that illustrates some aspect of...Read More

In recent years the National Library of Ireland took possession of a scrapbook containing documents and newspaper clippings concerning a career in the late-nineteenth century colonial administration of British West Africa. The scrapbook belonged to a man born in Mountrath in November 1842 named John Joseph Crooks. Crooks first landed in what was then known...Read More

On Friday November 9 1973 in the murky darkness of a winter morning stretched out along the road from Dublin to Portlaoise prison was a military operation the likes of which had not been seen since the civil war 50 years before.Read More

On Sunday the 5th of October 1873 Maryborough (now Portlaoise) hosted a rally spoken at by controversy provoking Thomas Mooney. Mooney wrote in the U.S.-based Irish World newspaper. It was then the largest selling publication catering to an Irish-American audience and would become known for its support for the ‘skirmishing’ wing of the Fenian movement.Read More

On the 6th of March 1923 a party of Free State soldiers were lured out of Tralee to their deaths in a booby trap explosion near the village of Knocknagoshel. The vicious retribution their comrades went on to visit upon the enemy guerrillas is well-known to this day. This article tells something of the story...Read More

There is a somewhat curious monument in the court square in Stradbally. Erected ‘In memory of a brave father and two worthy sons’ its curiosity lies in the fact that it commemorates two pro-Treaty victims of the political violence of the 1920s, something which is comparatively rare, and in that it does not mention the...Read More

Some veterans of the Great War came home to war — they put their Royal Irish Constabulary uniforms back on, or they were shot as informers by the Irish Republican Army, or they joined the I.R.A. and provided a much needed leaven of military experience. This article tells the story of some of these men...Read More

John Henry Edge (1841‒1916) was the grandson of John Edge who was a manager of the Newtown colliery for the Grand Canal Company. John Henry spent part of his childhood in Clonbrock House, on the very southern edge of Laois, and part in Wicklow. He became a novelist late in life and published two novels...Read More