Carlow

Second-smallest county in the Republic of Ireland, in the province of Leinster; county town Carlow; area 900 sq km/347 sq mi; population (2002) 46,000. The land is mostly flat except for the Blackstairs mountains in the south (rising to 796 m/2,612 ft in Mount Leinster). The land in the west is fertile and well suited to dairy farming. Products include barley, wheat, and sugar beet.

There is evidence of pre-Christian settlement in the region in the form of tomb monuments, or dolmens, the largest of which is at Browne's Hill; these are thought to date from 3300 BC. The ruins of a number of castles built in the 13th and 14th centuries can still be seen. These include Carlow Castle, Ballymoon Castle, Ballyloughan Castle, and Leighlinbridge Castle, a 14th century tower house.

Carlow

County town of County Carlow, Republic of Ireland; population (2002) 13,200. It is situated on the River Barrow, about 80 km/50 mi southwest of Dublin. The sugar refinery is in the centre of an extensive sugar beet-growing area. There are also electrical and engineering industries and tool and appliance manufacturing. The town is one of the fastest-growing in Ireland, partly due to its location near Dublin.

Carlow Castle, now a ruin, was built between 1207 and 1213 and it is thought that the town developed on a site separated from the castle by a swamp. The town was granted a charter in 1209. Carlow was a strategic stronghold of the Anglo-Normans and was the site of many conflicts in the 14th–18th centuries.

Features include the ruins of an Anglo-Norman keep dating from the 13th Century; Mount Browne Dolmen, a Neolithic stone tomb 3 km/2 mi east of Carlow, which has the largest capstone in Ireland; and the Carlow Courthouse, one of Ireland's finest 19th-century buildings. The town is the seat of the Roman Catholic bishop of Kildare and Leighlin. St Patrick's College, a seminary, was founded here in 1793. Carlow is also the location of the Institute of Technology Carlow, a major regional technical college.