Kilkenny

The city of Kilkenny in the county of the same name, is a city with an expansive history that stretches far beyond the historical bounds of other towns and cities in Ireland. With structures that were built in the 1100s still playing a role in the city today, Kilkenny fully integrates its storied past into its present. This same attitude extended into politics and imperial struggle, as Kilkenny saw itself as a hotbed for revolutionary activity in the War of Independence as well as the Civil War, and a location of electoral rejection of the aims of the British Crown and the Irish Loyalists that followed suit, always electing the most subversive candidates. Although Kilkenny wandered into the second half of the 20th Century and the city's relevance both as an urban center as well as a hotbed for revolution began to decline, the detailed history outshines its modest current standing. In this historical retelling of Kilkenny, it is easiest to track the ideological trends of the city through selected representatives from each time period. By selecting the individual out of the whole, but letting the individual represent the whole, the modern history of the city becomes a lot easier to track and narrate its history. From the pre-Famine rivalry of the Smithwick and Sullivan families to the revolutionary involvement of Peter DeLoughry, history is viewed through the representative actions of people in the city.

BEFORE THE FAMINE

Ireland’s history in the period after the 1800’s was one of political and economic struggle. Issues with modernization and managing an economy under the restrictions of the Act of Union was difficult , and the political struggles that followed presented obstacles and opportunity. The city of Kilkenny, in the Leinster county of the same name, is a large urban centertown lying in the southwest mainland of Ireland, situated  between Dublin and Cork . Derived from the Irish “Cill Chainnigh,” meaning Church of Canice, the city takes its name from one of the county’s four main parishes. These parishes are St. Patrick, St. Canice, St. John, and St. Mary, which mostly lie within  Kilkenny  itself. Situated along the large  River Nore , which bisects it unevenly, a smaller portion of the city is on the north-east bank of the river. The south-east bank of the river is itself bisected by a smaller river/canal that crosses through the section known as  “Irish Town” , which lies at the end of the Coal (sometimes also spelt ‘Cole’) Market. The city’s main street is named  High Street . Kilkenny possesses a history that predates the middle ages, with a record of St. Canice’s Cathedral, from  before 1085 . In addition to this, Kilkenny Castle, which the city formed around on a bend of the River Nore, was built in 1195. Kilkenny was  granted a Royal Charter  by King James I in 1609, giving it the status of a City. One of Kilkenny’s most distinctive features was its M edieval walls .

When Samuel Lewis was in Kilkenny in 1837, the  population  of the city alone was 23,741 people which was quite high for Ireland at the time, and there were about 2,800 houses mostly made of stone. Kilkenny’s infrastructure was well developed and included industry/manufacturing, markets, churches/hospitals, as well as private residences in Kilkenny and in its immediate vicinity. In addition, two bridges cross the river Nore : St. Johns to the south near Kilkenny Castle, and Greens Bridge to the north near Irish Town. Outside of the city was an infantry barracks that could house upwards of 500 non-commissioned soldiers. There was a small  city jail  described as being of poor quality and a larger, modern county jail with 48 cells. These were accompanied by a “peace preservation force” that costs £712.15.10. There were a few hospitals and infirmiraries in the city as well, with one on High Street and one on Rose Inn Street.

Access to  education  was available to many in Kilkenny. About 1,100 children were taught in public schools and about 1,500 were taught in private schools in 1837.  Birchfield College  (now  St. Kierans  College) was a seminary that trained young men for the priesthood, was established on the south side of the city after passage of the Catholic Relief Act in 1782. Three hundred Catholic girls were being educated by the Presentation order of nuns at the local convent school. Two dozen Catholic boys were being educated in the Protestant religion in conjunction with training in the skills required for linen weaving. Regarding higher education, the  College of Kilkenny , founded in the sixteenth century, was a boarding school that prepared students for entry to Trinity College in Dublin. 

Two local industries, formerly prosperous, were in decline  by the 1830s : marble and wool. From 1821 to 1837 the number of people employed in Kilkenny’s woollen blanket industry decreased by 2400-3400 employees, and wages also dropped, as a consequence of the expiration of protective tariffs combined with reduced demand from its principal buyer, the British Army. The same effected the Kilkenny  marble quarry  whose business prospered during the war with France due to the Napoleonic blockade, but thereafter production greatly dwindled. Kilkenny marble was black with white veins  “interspersed with shells and marine exuciae. ” It was cut and polished for mantelpieces in Blackrath, two miles from the city, then exported. By the late 1830s, Kilkenny’s chief economic base was now ‘corn’, the generic term for all grains at the time. The city was surrounded by many flour mills, two tanneries, three distilleries, and four breweries. The breweries grew to be a much more central focus of Kilkenny in later years. 

The principal houses of the local gentry in Kilkenny included Castle Blunded, Bonnestown, Rosehill, Orchardton, Danville, as well as Kilcreen, in the Barony of Crannagh, which belonged in 1837 to Clayton Bayly, Esq.

By 1849, according to Griffith's Valuation, Kilcreen was  owned by a William Bayly Esq . Their possession of  Kilcreen  suggests a relationship. When looking at Griffith’s Valuation for Kilkenny, William Bayly (often referred to as “W.m. Bayly” or simply “W. Bayly”) seemed to own much of Kilkenny’s lands and tenements. With regards to Kilcreen he rented the building and lands to Edmund Smithwick who was  Mayor of Kilkenny in 1844 , and again in 1864 and 1865. Edmund Smithwick was  also a local director  at the National Bank of Ireland in Kilkenny. His brother, Daniel, who lived in Kilcreen as well, was Mayor in 1857 and. Edmund’s son James became Mayor in 1884. Thus, this family was important to municipal government for nearly half a century. The Smithwick family was responsible for one of the  largest breweries  in Kilkenny functioning out of the  St. Francis Abbey . Edmund was in charge from 1827 until his retirement in 1860;, he increased trade and production from 5,000 barrels to around 40,000 barrels. They were not the sole brewers in Kilkenny, however; their main rival in business and politics was the  Sullivan family . 

The Sullivan family and its red ale brewing company was led by Richard Sullivan, himself a former Mayor of Kilkenny in 1837, and  Kilkenny’s M.P . from 1832 until 1836, representing the Repeal Association. Richard’s brother Michael was Mayor in 1854, and was also a Member of Parliament for Co. Tipperary from 1847 until 1865. Sullivan was related to W. Bayly through multiple real estate holdings; lands rented by W. Bayly to Richard Sullivan were then rented it to other subtenants. Sullivan and Smithwick had another mutual associate, political figure and revolutionary leader Daniel O’Connell. Smithwick was good friends with O’Connell throughout their acquaintance, Richard Sullivan less so initially. O’Connell even called for a boycott against the Sullivan brewing company when Richard was elected Mayor. They eventually reconciled when Richard Sullivan gave up his M.P. seat for Daniel O’Connell.

THE FAMINE HITS

The outlook in Kilkenny before the potato blight spread across the country was bright. The city was not the biggest in Ireland but was still in the strata of a city big enough to have its own influence and sense of identity. In 1841, right before the start of the Great Hunger,  demographics  in Kilkenny were quite favorable. The population of the city totaled around 19,071 people with about 3,931 families, and although the total population was lower than when Samuel Lewis visited (23,741 inhabitants), Kilkenny was a significant urban center in this region of Ireland. A majority (1,960) of families were involved in local manufacturing, with another 1,118 families involved in agriculture. 

When the blight struck in 1845, Kilkenny first took a  massive blow  to its potato production. At the time, over half of the population of Ireland was dependent on potatoes to some or all extent. In Kilkenny over  45% of the 1845 crop  was destroyed. While this was slightly better when compared to the rest of Ireland where around half of the crop was destroyed, the loss was still felt in Kilkenny and was felt even more profoundly in the following year. In 1846, almost all of the crop in Kilkenny was destroyed, when 90% of it was lost elsewhere in the country. In that same year, almost  1,300 people died  as a result of the Famine. In December 26, 1846 a writer for the Nation reflected on the phenomena of the beginning of the potato blight: “Even in Wexford and Kilkenny the famine begins to be felt - those favored counties on which the harvest sun threw its best beams - in whose fields the reaper never missed a stalk, where the sower had sown a seed.”

In addition, new legislation in 1838 led to the creation of the  Kilkenny County Poor Law Union  of which the city was the center. In 1841, the Poor Law Workhouse was built in Kilkenny, north of the  Great Southern & Western Railroad  lines that passed through the city, and was intended to hold 1,300 inmates, making it the fifth largest in the country. Thus, circumstances on the eve of the Famine -- including breweries and a quarry -- were quite favorable for Kilkenny compared with other parts of Ireland. However, the Workhouse played a key role in the chaos and disorder felt during the Famine, and industry in Kilkenny was still hit incredibly hard.

Although the existence of the Workhouse seemed to gesture towards hopeful prospects, its actual execution was much more lackluster. Conditions in the Workhouse were described as incredibly decrepit for the poor who inhabited it. A December 17, 1842 edition of the Nation described a mutiny in the workhouse that caused its master to resign. 

By 1847 the Workhouse now held 2,340. Its cramped spaces proved to be catastrophic the following year. An 1848 article published in the  Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science  by Kilkenny physician Joseph Lalor detailed an outbreak of typhoid in the Workhouse that led to an astounding amount of deaths. It reached such a peak that the Workhouse had to dig mass graves. This was discovered in  a recent archaeological study  of the site of the Workhouse that found that over 970 individuals had been buried in about 63 mass graves at the Kilkenny Workhouse. Of thoese 970, about 499 indicated that they had advanced scurvy, evidence of malnutrition even if typhoid was the direct cause of death. The typhoid outbreaks did not slow the volume of inmates at the Workhouse, which increased even further by 1851 to 4,357 people, more than triple the capacity originally intended. As the Workhouse became overwhelmed, clerical negligence followed. On February 26, 1848 an article in the Nation noted an extreme lack of attentiveness regarding new residents, with most people not even being checked in or having their names written down. Although the Hunger itself proved devastating to the city of Kilkenny, the Workhouse served as the main catalyst for the acceleration of misery and death in the city. The lasting effect of the Kilkenny Workhouse in the context of the Famine in this area is even more pronounced in retrospect, as the site of the Workhouse (now the MacDonagh Junction Shopping Center) offers a tour called the  “Kilkenny Famine Experience”  and is the location of a  Famine Memorial Garden .

In the wake of a famine that no one had prepared for, the British government’s assistance was incredibly blundered as well. A.R.G Griffiths wrote in his  study  of the Irish Board of Works about an incident in October 1846 where the city of Kilkenny solicited funding for a much needed local works project and had to wait almost two months before laborers were employed. This led to a wide backlash in the local media, further highlighting the government's failure in managing this crisis. For example, the Tuam Herald on May 1, 1847 reported how a group of armed men threatened a Board of Works pay clerk into resigning. Subsequently, a trend developed throughout Ireland that saw private landowners and wealthy people providing more relief than the government itself. This happened in Kilkenny as well, with the unlikely pairing of two prominent men. In either  1847  or  1849 , brewers Richard Sullivan and Edmund Smithwick, although rivals in business, put their differences aside and opened a soup kitchen in Kilkenny ink response to the extraordinary circumstances..

In 1851, as the blight receded, the extent of damage on the city of Kilkenny was evident. Between 1841-1851, an estimated  8,607 people  perished in the city of Kilkenny. When broadening the scope to County Kilkenny, around 27,840 people died; therefore the city accounted for 31% of the county’s Famine mortality. These deaths mostly peaked in the middle three years of the Great Hunger (1847, 1848, 1849) with annual city death counts totalling 2,138, 1,095, and 1,660. The deaths of almost 9,000 people in Kilkenny, along with emigration from 1846-1851 which  S.H. Cousens  estimates accounted for anywhere from 12.5-14.9% of Ireland’s total 1841emigrating population, suggests a drop in Kilkenny in the wake of the famine. However, the  decrease in population  did not seem that bad, dropping from 19,071 to only about 15,257 in 1851, with about 3,664 families. This is more compelling considering the lack of internal migration during these times, also noted by Cousens. But this demographic shift could be explained by a possible inter-county migration as people moved from the surrounding countryside of Co. Kilkenny into the city of Kilkenny to reside in the Workhouse. 

AFTER THE FAMINE

The Famine left all of Ireland stunned and faced the country with a sense of precariousness not felt since the era of Cromwell. This resulted in political and cultural movements that defined the period from the end of the Famine until the early 1890’s. Chief among these movements was the massive push for land reform that found its grassroots among tenant farmers, who after the Famine, had a list of demands to wrest away control from their mostly Dublin- or London-based landlords. Another critical movement was the Devotional Revolution as presented by the Catholic Cardinal Paul Cullen, which tapped into the nationalist religious sentiments of the Irish Catholic population and called for the disestablishment of the Anglican Church of Ireland. These movements found their materialization in Kilkenny through the actions, works and stories of individuals. The agitation for tenant rights can be seen in the story of the Raftis family, whose eviction nearby led to a boycott. Another important individual whose story displays both the issues of land agitation and the newly agitated religious devotion ethos was the life of Sir John Gray, a former Member of Parliament for the City of Kilkenny. These stories along with other sources regarding the convents of Kilkenny, neatly place Kilkenny in the wider national context of Ireland and the various movements it was experiencing at the time. They also lay the foundation for the explosive political scene of the late 19th and early 20th century.

The imprint left on Ireland in the wake of the Famine and the resulting destitution led to the passage of the Encumbered Estates Act, which established a court which held the authority to sell an estate and distribute the funds among creditors of the estate. Many tenant farmers saw this Act as insufficient to protect the tenants from exploitation of their labor at the hands of their landlords, so tenant rights leagues began to form in the south. The first of these sprung up in October 1849 only 20 kilometers from Kilkenny City in  Callan . This was followed by a wave of local tenant rights leagues being formed around the country. These local organizations came together in May 1850 to create the national “Tenant League”, which served as the organizational base for the land wars that began later, towards the end of the post-Famine period resulting from the continued agitation between landlords and tenants. This tension was further exacerbated by a new threat of destitution as presented by the mini-famine of 1879. While mostly located in the west of Ireland, it still had its effect on Kilkenny due to the city’s reliance on its surrounding hinterland. This reliance led to hard times for the “labouring classes and poor tradesmen” of Kilkenny city. The mini-famine of 1879 served to further stoke the tensions between tenant and landlord, and this became apparent in the story of the Raftis family.

The  Raftis  family farmed 88 acres of land at  Powerswood , about 24 kilometers south of Kilkenny City, for their Dublin-based landlord Dr. Jennings. The eviction and the razing of the Raftis house led to immediate community backlash, with large crowds gathering to protest the dispossession of the family from their home. When the former Raftis land was rented out to their neighbor, Patrick Hanrahan, the organizational capabilities of the local Land League were put into action; solidarity for the Raftis clan turned into action. A full scale boycott of Hanrahan took effect, even including refusing him service at local bars. The boycott proved successful as Hanrahan decided to join the Land League and reinstate the Raftises at Powerswood. The eviction of this Co. Kilkenny family was not unique, but the result of this boycott illustrates the growing capabilities of local Land Leagues to organize and act in an effective manner. 

In this same time period, Irish Catholicism experienced a surge in religious devotions and new Catholic construction. In Kilkenny City, this increased Catholic presence was seen in the schools and convents. In the 1864  Special reports to Commissioners of National Education in Ireland on convent schools , the education provided by Catholic schools in the city were reported as sufficient or even above average. Later, the schoolbooks of these Kilkenny convents and schools recorded an emphasis on historical Catholic oppression, for example, the “hunting” of Catholic priests, both during the  Cromwellian Era  as well as the much more recent era of the  Penal Laws . Catholic education thus also stirred nationalist sensibilities by connecting the era of direct domination and destruction at the hands of Cromwell with the more coded colonialism under the Penal Laws. 

After this success, the re-elected Kilkenny City MP turned back to his focus on land agitation, which he had initially taken an interest in after the death of O’Connell. Gray had issues with Gladstone’s Land Act of 1870, as he felt it had not gone far enough to protect tenants. This led to him eventually vote “No” on the Act, but it passed anyway. Later in life, Gray found himself involved in the issue that would dominate the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century, the Home Rule movement. Although initially “apathetic” to the movement, he ran unopposed and was re-elected as Kilkenny City MP for the Home Rule party. The continued lack of electoral opposition to Gray shows his popularity in Kilkenny City, and the fervor for which he shared his ideas suggests the popularity of these ideas among the people of Kilkenny City. After Gray’s death in 1875, the parliamentary seat for Kilkenny City was now up for grabs after being occupied for 10 years. The 1875 by-election illustrates another view into the evolution of Kilkenny City politics, as the only three candidates to run were all members of the Home Rule party. Benjamin Whitworth won the seat with 55% of the vote, but eventually resigned to contest for another seat, leading to another by-election in 1880. The election of 1880 saw a familiar lineage reappear, as John Francis Smithwick was elected unopposed to the seat 16 years after Edmund Smithwick sat as  mayor of Kilkenny City , a position John Francis himself occupied in 1884. He was re-elected in 1885 as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party and held his seat until 1886. In the 1886 election, treasurer of the Irish National League and Irish Land League Thomas Quinn was elected unopposed. The continued decision of the Kilkenny City constituency to elect politicians who were unapologetically pro-Catholic, pro-tenant, and pro-Home Rule, reveals Kilkenny City to hold nationalist and republican sympathies. 

The stories of the Raftis family, John Gray, and the evolution of the seat for the Kilkenny City constituency all outline the broader movements that surged in Ireland as a reaction to the Great Famine. The success they found among the Irish population stoked the tension that more or less exploded in the early 20th century.

VIOLENCE AND REVOLUTION IN KILKENNY

The pro-Irish governance of Kilkenny City continued, as the elections at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Centuries still showed a desire for Home Rule. Outside of the realm of domestic Irish politics and struggles, Kilkenny City found itself represented on the world stage by its tragic involvement in World War 1 under the banner of the British Army. 

The first thread to track are the electoral political views of the Kilkenny City constituency is to analyze the  elections of the position of Member of Parliament (MP) in Kilkenny City . In the Post-Famine period, the position of MP was initially dominated by the Home Rule party, and then eventually the Irish Parliamentary party. In an 1892 election for Kilkenny City MP, Thomas Bartholomew Curran, member of the Irish National League, won in a close election beating the member of the Irish National Federation John O’Connor by 55% to 45%. The split between the Anti-Parnellite Irish National Federation and Parnellite Irish National League remained contested in the following election in 1895, as the Parnellite Pat O’Brien beat out Anti-Parnellite James Patrick Farrell, who was also the founder and owner of the Longford Leader newspaper. This electoral split was much closer as Pat O’Brien won with only a 50.5% share of the vote as opposed to Farrell’s 49.5%. Pat O’Brien remained an uncontested MP until his death in 1917, rejoining the Irish Parliamentary Party when it reunited in 1900. The 1917 by-election that resulted from his death showed the intrusion of explicitly militant Nationalist politics into the electoral field as Sinn Féin representative W.T. Cosgrave beat Irish Parliamentary Party member John Magennis by 66.3% to 33.7%. The somewhat resounding defeat of the comparatively tepid Irish Parliamentary Party showed a fervor for independence spurred by the Easter Rising of 1916 and resulting strife. Another testament to the influence of the Easter Rising was the fact that Cosgrave was elected while imprisoned due to his role in the Easter Rising. He was even initially condemned to death but the punishment got rolled back to penal servitude in Wales. Cosgrave was elected MP for North Kilkenny until the abolition of the constituency in 1918 in the wake of the establishment of the first Daíl Eireann. 

Under the establishment of the Irish Free State and the convening of the Irish Daíl, Co. Kilkenny was combined with Co. Carlow and was assigned 4 Deputies, now called  Teachtaí Dála ’s (TDs). The  1921 general election  of the Daíl saw the Carlow-Kilkenny constituency represented by four Sinn Féin party representatives. The line-up of the Carlow-Kilkenny constituency remained very nationalist and left through the first years of the 1920’s. In 1921 it was dominated by Sinn Féin politicians and Labour and the Farmers Party  held seats  in 1923. After the Anglo-Irish treaty, the split of Sinn Féin still did not weaken the Republican presence in electoral Kilkenny politics, as the W.T. Cosgrave led  Cumann na nGaedhal . Overall, the electoral presence of nationalists in the Dail for Kilkenny City maintained throughout the War of Independence as well as the Civil War.

Outside the realm of electoral politics, Kilkenny City showed its support for the Irish Republican movement in the form of manpower that benefited the various nationalist guerilla movements. In 1916 there were an estimated  60 Volunteers in Kilkenny City , and although they played no active role in the Easter Rising, they were in close contact with the wider network of Irish Volunteers and were specifically taking cues from  Ginger O’Connell  when it came to matters of the Easter Rising. It is still debated over why the Kilkenny Volunteers were not directly involved in the Rising, but it is thought that it is due to their poor equipment, with only about 55 guns to supply 60 volunteers. It is also thought that while O’Connell advocated for the Kilkenny Volunteers to restrain themselves from participating in the Rising, the local IRB leader Peter DeLoughry was more eager to participate. Peter DeLoughry, a  future mayor of Kilkenny city in 1919 , was a leadership figure among the Kilkenny City Republicans. He used his  rental car service  for communication among Republican rebels and also made home-made grenades. After the Rising, DeLoughry, Cosgrave and GAA President and Kilkenny City native James Nowlan were among the most prominent figures to be arrested due to nationalist sympathies. 

After the Rising and as the War of Independence broke out, Kilkenny City found itself in  close proximity  to the early milestones that marked the war, most notably the first capture of an RIC Barracks in Leinster at Hugginstown, which was only ~30 km away from Kilkenny City, by the IRA Kilkenny brigade. This continued through the war, as there were no direct battles or confrontations in Kilkenny City, there were some in the  surrounding areas  such as Coolbaun, Mullinavat, and Callan. Another notable appearance of Kilkenny City in the War of Independence was in December 1920 when IRA rebel Ernie O’Malley was arrested there by RIC forces, and notes he had on him were c onfiscated that listed the names of Volunteers in the 7th West Kilkenny Brigade , which led to the subsequent arrest of those Volunteers. 

The conclusion of the War of Independence with the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the establishment of the Irish Free State and the partition of Northern Ireland led to a growing split in the Republican forces, with some being pro-treaty and others anti-treaty. These two opposing forces made up the belligerents of the Civil War, but there was tension in Kilkenny City before the official outbreak. Eoin Walsh writes about how close Kilkenny City was to instigating the Civil War as he catalogues an  incident between pro and anti-treaty forces :

“In early May 1922, nearly two months prior to the official beginning of the Civil War, Kilkenny anti-Treaty IRA units took over 15 buildings in Kilkenny City, most notably St Canice’s Cathedral and Kilkenny Castle. There followed a two-day gun battle between those barricaded in the buildings and the Free State/National Army who attempted to dislodge them. Eventually, all anti-Treaty positions were captured by the pro-Treaty forces.”

This confrontational incident in Kilkenny City brings the city to the forefront of the scene that arose in the wake of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, and although the confrontation ended with a  truce , it only served to stoke the national tension. On 15 December 1922, during the Civil War, a Free State garrison at Kilkenny was  overrun by anti-treaty forces .

As Ireland was still a part of Britain at the time of World War 1, many Irish men volunteered to fight on behalf of the Allies. The most tragic of these cases was that of Tommy Woodgate from Callan, only 20 km away from Kilkenny City. Woodgate served with the Royal Air Force at only 14 years old. Only 6 months after he signed up, he was returning to service from leave when his ship was attacked by a German U-Boat and subsequently sunk, killing Woodgate as well as 500 others. In an  article reporting the unveiling  of a World War 1 memorial in Kilkenny, Conor Kane outlines the other casualties from Kilkenny City and County:

Of the 827 men and boys from Co. Kilkenny who died, Tommy was one of 66 teenagers, while five were nurses, three were chaplains. A total of 324 have no known graves having been killed in action: 

Two local families lost three sons: the O’Connells from Maudlin Street and the Kavanaghs from Wolfe Tone Street. Both had other sons who survived. There were 28 families who lost two sons and three families who lost a father and son.

The early decades of the 20th Century in Ireland were violent, both in the domestic and foreign theaters. From Kilkenny City’s volunteers’ role in the Easter Rising, to a near-outbreak of Civil War after the occupation of Kilkenny Castle and St. Canice’s Cathedral, the nationalist spirit that had been shown in Kilkenny City in the Post-Famine period was turned into kinetic action in the 20th Century.

MID-20TH CENTURY AND PRE-CELTIC TIGER

After the Civil War, Kilkenny City started to cool off and remaining agitation from the Anti-treaty forces for the most part dissipated. The rest of the 20th century saw Kilkenny City’s status as a major urban center start to wane as the growth in population in the city failed to match other cities in the newly formed Republic of Ireland. The effects of the founding of the Republic were beginning to be internalized by the people of Kilkenny City, as the contents of Kilkenny Castle were sold by the Butler family in 1935 and promptly abandoned it for 30 years. Upon the Butler’s return to Kilkenny, Arthur Butler the 6th Marquess and 24th Earl of Ormond who had now come into possession of the Castle, sold it to the Castle Restoration Committee for a ceremonial payment of  £50 , finally turning over Kilkenny’s most notable landmark into the possession of  the state . Arthur Butler made a statement at the official handover ceremony "The people of Kilkenny, as well as myself and my family, feel a great pride in the Castle, and we have not liked to see this deterioration. We determined that it should not be allowed to fall into ruins. There are already too many ruins in Ireland".

The biggest development in Kilkenny City in the 20th Century after the Civil War and before the Celtic Tiger period was the establishment of the Kilkenny Design Workshop in 1963 and its opening in 1965. The  Kilkenny Design Workshop  (KDW) was a state agency intended to foster development of domestic design in the wake of protective tariffs. The KDW offered workshops in ceramics, candle making, precious metals, and metalworks. Later in 1969 it offered workshops in metalworks, woodturning and textiles, graphic design, and furniture design. As the first government-funded agency outside of Dublin, it was founded by Chief Executive of Córas Tráchtála Teoranta (Irish Export Board) William H. Walsh. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, the KDW shifted from a traditional industry focus to engineering based industries and offering consultancy services regarding industrial design.

In its time, the KDW was a success, leading to its venture into retail, with stores in New York, San Francisco, London, Dallas, Kilkenny, and Dublin. This international retail effort served to spread Kilkenny’s name outside of Ireland and legitimized the efforts of the KDW. The revenue coming in from retail caused an ill-timed decision of the KDW to become self-sufficient before a recession and drop in retail prices caused them to close in 1988.

Another disappointing moment of the economic process in Kilkenny City was the story of the Fieldcrest Textile Factory. The opening of the factory in  September 1980  displayed the intervention of foreign capital that would define the Celtic Tiger period. The North Carolinian Fieldcrest began building the 50,000m square factory in 1979 and it was ready to begin manufacturing in late 1980. Many people from around Ireland as well as from England  moved into Kilkenny  to work in the new factory, resulting in a large scale purchasing of homes in the area. The employment of 630 workers in the factory was a massive development for the region, making up  almost 20%  of the workforce. However, disaster struck as Ireland’s inflation hit a record high, and the factory was forced to close in 1982. All 630 workers were laid off, causing an unemployment crisis in Kilkenny, whereas before 1982 there were less than 80 unemployed people in Kilkenny City, there was now 708, experiencing a more than 900% increase. Many workers advocated for the government to reclaim the factory and let the workers themselves run it, but the government did not take this suggestion. The plant’s purchasing manager Donal Conroy told the New York Times ''The starting-up costs are estimated at 7 million...That's about the Government's cost of keeping 630 workers on the unemployment dole for a year.''

Debate ensued in the  Daíl Eireann , with Carlow-Kilkenny TDs Kieran Crotty from Fine Gael, and Seamus Pattinson from Labour leading the argument that control of the factory should be handed over to the workers. This idea was met with resistance from the Minister for Industry and Energy Albert Reynolds. The pre-Celtic Tiger failure of foreign investment as well as government interventions displayed the brutality of the 1980s recessions on the people of Kilkenny City.

CELTIC TIGER AND THE 21ST CENTURY

The times of the Celtic Tiger did not immediately descend upon Kilkenny, and the imprint was not too obvious when it did come. In the boom caused by foreign investment in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Kilkenny seemed to be left out at least for a short while. An early February 2000  Irish Times  article detailed Kilkenny’s “[failure] to attract foreign investors”. The article does however note that the biggest enterprise in the county was  Glanbia , a food manufacturer that employed more than 200 workers. Founded in Kilkenny City in 1997, Glanbia was not a perfect example of foreign Celtic Tiger investment as it was more or less homegrown, but nonetheless it had an important role as the City’s biggest employer. Another local company that spawned before the 21st Century was Cartoon Saloon. Although Cartoon Saloon was an indie production company initially, it served to be the target of foreign investment in 2001 by the French production company Les Armateurs, and throughout the 21st century grew to establish a creative force in Kilkenny, accruing Academy Award nominations along the way.

The “lack of attraction” was quickly reversed, as by September of 2000, when Deutsche Bank  moved into Kilkenny  bringing a promised 200 jobs, matching Glanbia as a major employer. In 2001 Kilkenny saw another example of direct foreign investing, as the American holding company State Street  opened an office  in Kilkenny in 2001, which was followed in the same year with the establishment of a Banking 365 office.

When analyzing the occupational  census reports  from 1996 at the start of the Celtic Tiger and 2006 towards the end of it a re-alignment of employment is evident. Every occupation grew in amount of workers, with every industry experiencing an average growth of 51%, with the highest being in clerical and government jobs (70%) and the lowest being in manufacturing (14%). The only industry that experienced a decline in worker population was farming, fishing and forestry, which faced a 67% decrease in workers employed. This is further representative of the movement from the rural areas into the urban that has been happening since right after the Famine. Despite this, Kilkenny still had a  higher percentage  of their workforce in farming (8%) than the rest of Ireland (4%). 

The participation of Kilkenny in the Celtic Tiger era redeemed the failed experiments of the KDW and of the Fieldcrest factory, and also brought Kilkenny into momentary alignment with the rest of Ireland.

CONCLUSION

The history of Kilkenny in Modern Ireland is one filled with characters and moments that serve to represent Ireland as a whole. Whether it be the local business rivalries between the Smithwicks and Sullivans, the career of M.P. John Gray, the anti-treaty attack on Kilkenny Castle, or the establishment of an Academy Award nominated film studio right in the city, Kilkenny in its individual actions and events represented Ireland at large in some way. And although Kilkenny is no longer the urban power it once was (although circumstances are  pointing to that   changing ), its great historical depth and importance will lead to its eternal significance in the history of Ireland