Showcasing Laois History and Heritage
An Initiative of Laois Library Service

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The rumour went like this: on Saturday the 9th of June 1832 the Virgin Mary appeared on the church altar in Charleville, in north county Cork, and left ashes which were the only protection against cholera. The ashes were to be taken to neighbouring houses and placed under the rafters, then the inhabitants of those...
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It is often claimed that the men who returned from the Great War were forgotten after they returned to an Ireland which had changed. This is in fact simply not true of the immediate decades after the war, however true it might be for much later decades at the close of the twentieth century. Moreover,...
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On the 1st of January 1920, despite it being the fair day, the streets of Maryborough were strangely silent. The silence was not to last. What was missing was motor traffic and not just because there was much less of it then than now. The absence was due to a cessation of all motor driving...
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On the 12th of March 1922 there was a cattle drive in the townland of Ballycarnan. Ballycarnan is just south of Portlaoise, to the east of the road to Abbeyleix. The property was then owned by Miss Flora S. Cassan of Sheffield House. In her evidence when making a bid for compensation in 1924 she...
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This article is an extract from a forthcoming chapter on the labour movement in Laois which will appear in a collection of essays to be published by Umiskin Press on the provincial working-class experience of the Irish revolution.
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In the spring of 1922, there were twelve battalions comprising the soon-to be disbanded six southern Irish regiments of the British Army – four of those battalions were stationed in India and had to return home from there for disbandment – they were the 1st Battalion Leinster Regiment, 1st Battalion Connaught Rangers, 2nd Battalion Royal...
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One of the many treasures safeguarded in Laois Libraries’ Local Studies section is a memoir from Timahoe, a memoir which begins in 1913. The work is entitled Timahoe, as I remember 1914 and the memorialist is Jack Quigley, of Ballygormill, Timahoe. This is an undated typed document. The present article offers some extracts from the...
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In 1921 the Wolfhill Collieries company was planning an extensive expansion and seeking investment funds through offering shares to the public. Unfortunately, the company went into receivership in the summer of 1925. So this phase of coal-mining in Wolfhill ran between 1910, when efforts to re-start began, and 1925, with receivership and eventual liquidation.
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Kathleen Muldowney was one of five Labour candidates nominated for election to Maryborough Town Commission in the local urban and municipal elections of January 1920. Maryborough Town Commission was a layer of local government established in 1855 and was finally wound-up in 2014, by then re-named Portlaoise Town Council.
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On January 26th 1922 Maryborough Courthouse resounded to cries of “Up the Republic” from the gallery as a self-described “Republican soldier” was taken from the dock denouncing “the informers of Ballinakill” as he went. The prisoners were Peter Campion, John Campion and Alphonsus O’Hara. The charge was murder. Despite the defiant posturing this speech from...
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About Us

Laois Local Studies was established to collect, preserve and make available for reference, material relating to the history and heritage of County Laois.