Eileen O’Rourke is the chief executive of Carlow Tourism, which is based in the same building as the local museum: itself a former Presentation convent right in the middle of the town. She has lived in the town for 28 years. Over time, she has seen various changes in Carlow, a town with a population of 27,351 in the 2022 census.
“Maybe this is reflective of all towns in Ireland, but what I would have seen most of all is a sense of pride in the upkeep and presentation of the town,” she says. Before moving to Carlow, O’Rourke had been working in Germany for some years. The contrast was initially a shock. “Carlow was maybe not the cleanest town in those days.”
Does she think that “county town” still has a meaning, as it applies to Carlow?
“Yes I do. The county town is the hub of a county and where you expect to find employment, facilities, all of which allow people to still live in their own county. But I’d love to see more of people living over the shop in the town centre, because I don’t think there’s too much of that left in Carlow now.”
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Marcus McCormack is the director of McCormack’s estate agency on Tullow Street, where he has worked for 28 years.
“I think the days of people living in town centres, whether they are county towns or not, are gone,” he says. “The town centres are now places of temporary accommodation rather than homes: investors would be buying apartments for rental.”
Are county towns still relevant in Ireland in 2025, I ask.
“Sport is the new boundary,” he says. “The GAA clubs are very strong in Carlow town, but in the smaller rural towns, the GAA is the town, and the smaller towns cling to their one club. The pub culture is now declining, and sports clubs are increasing. Rather than going for a pint, young people are now going training. Things are changing.”
What do McCormack’s buyers want from housing today?
“Efficiency has become a very important part of the demand. People want modern, efficient houses, not old houses to do up. The days of the do-er upper in town centre are really gone. The cost of renovation is very difficult to take on, and demand is modest enough.”
A decade ago, a three-bed semi in Carlow town cost €225,000. It now costs €325,000. A one-bed apartment in the town is €165,000. Houses remain more popular choices than apartments, but he sees very few mortgage applications for houses that are not joint: the price of a house is much more difficult for a single applicant to afford. “Single applicants are between five and 10 per cent of our entire business.”
“I have never heard anyone calling Carlow a county town,” reflects Conal O’Boyle, editor of the weekly Carlow Nationalist. The paper was founded in 1883, and its office at Hanover Road is the same as newsrooms everywhere: stacks of papers scattered around, a phone ringing, and the intangible sense of deadlines in the atmosphere.
“The idea of what a town in Ireland is, let alone a county town, has changed so much,” says reporter Marie Boran. “For instance, there is no need any more to come into a county town to do your shopping. Nearly every small town has an Aldi or a Lidl now. I personally have no loyalty to any county when it come to shopping. Carlow doesn’t have a TKMaxx, there is no sushi restaurant, there is only a small Boots ...”
“Tullow Street used to be the main shopping street in Carlow, but it maybe doesn’t have the same attraction for shoppers now that it once had,” says O’Boyle.
Everyone knew everyone else in those days; they all lived over the shops, apart from the big shopkeepers
— Betty O’Gorman
He mentions that the street is pedestrianised at the weekend, and there is a conversation about the pros and cons of this for local shoppers.
Boran’s take on the pedestrianisation is that: “Consumers have got so used to parking where they shop. If people could, they would drive up to the cash register. Consumers have become so lazy.”
Putting out a weekly newspaper to the county, they have an excellent insight into what engages their readers when it comes to local news and their county town.
“It’s the small stuff,” says reporter Elizabeth Lee. “Local businesses, local achievements. Stories about Carlow town do the best.”
“There’s a lot of local pride in the town, because it is so small,” O’Boyle says. “Hyper local news does well. Stories from the district court. Sports. But in terms of the town itself, imagination is needed now for its future development.”
“If you look at Dublin Street, there are a lot of artisan shops there, but they are opening and closing all the time,” says Boran.
Dublin Street is one of Carlow’s oldest and most historic streets. It contains the bones of once-grand and large Georgian houses, and was clearly impressive architecturally in the past. It still is a remarkable street, even though some of the buildings are now unoccupied or derelict, awaiting a kind of new lives. There are some landmark buildings on the street, including the Old Assembly Rooms.
This building dates from the later 18th century, and as the name suggests, was constructed as a place for social gatherings. Dinners, dances, lectures and concerts were held here. The building was inherited by playwright George Bernard Shaw in 1899 from a family member. Shaw subsequently gave it to the people of Carlow town.
One person who still lives on Dublin Street is Betty O’Gorman (89), who is from a third-generation Carlow family. She ran the restaurant Beams and a wine and cheese delicatessen at a premises on the street with her late husband Peter for many years. She continues to live over the former restaurant.
“It was a coaching inn, as far back as 1766,” she says. “It must be nearly 50 years ago that we opened the first deli in Carlow, The Wine Tavern. We sold smoked salmon from Flanagan in Waterford, and wheels of Wexford cheddar cheese and wine. We supplied pubs and restaurants in Dublin with wine, including Patrick Guilbaud.”
O’Gorman was born on Montgomery Street in the town, just off Dublin Street. We are talking over tea in the Seven Oaks Hotel. Part of the hotel was originally a house called Greenbank, which O’Gorman remembers. “Miss Molly used to be upstairs playing her harp. My mother used to send us to buy apples from the gardener of the house,” she recalls.
O’Gorman also remembers when the sugar beet factory was in production. “It was the first real industry in Carlow, and it made the town because there was very little employment then. Men worked shifts in the factory. I’d be reading in bed and I’d hear them coming off the midnight shift: what sounded like hundreds of bikes going past my window.”
She also remembers when a cattle mart was held in the middle of the town, and seeing cattle herded along the streets to where the Fairgreen shopping centre is now located.
“Everyone knew everyone else in those days; they all lived over the shops, apart from the big shopkeepers. Some Catholics wouldn’t have shopped in Shaws because it was Protestant-owned. I miss the people who owned the shops. There are not many of us who live on the street now.”
Declan MacDonald’s family have owned Macs Menswear on Tullow Street for decades. His son Cian is at the front counter as I come in through the handsome mahogany door.
“That door is there since 1948,” Declan MacDonald says, when he has finished serving a customer who was in to buy casual trousers and a sweatshirt. “It came out of some shop in Dublin. When we put in a new shop front, it was made to go around the door.”
I ask MacDonald what he thinks are the elements that make Carlow a county town. “The independent traders,” he says.
According to MacDonald, the last three years have been “phenomenal” for business, contrary to the story of many other such shops around the country.
“Fashions and colours and styles will change, but the main thing that won’t change is service. We know a lot of our customers, so we can offer personal service, and chat away while we are at it. Carlow is the second-smallest county in Ireland so it’s not hard to know a lot of people.
“You need to be able to adapt when serving people. One customer could be in because of a funeral, while the next would be looking to get togged out for a wedding. You need be able to adjust.”
Colleague Seamus Kinsella is on a day off today and not in the shop, but MacDonald tells me he has been working at Macs since 1974. Is it possible that anyone else in the country could have been working in the same shop for 51 years?
It’s only later, when I have left Carlow, that I remember my parents lived for a time in Carlow town at the start of their marriage. My late father wore either a suit, or a shirt, tie and sweater almost the entirety of his long life. It struck me that he and my mother would almost certainly have been through the same front door of Macs that I myself had gone through that day, to choose some clothes for him during the years they lived therei. It’s completely possible that Declan MacDonald’s father, Tom, served them: a line of service that continues to this day.
Series concludes
