Clonmel

Market town in County Tipperary, Republic of Ireland, on the River Suir; population (2002) 15,800. Clonmel is the administrative centre for the South Riding of Tipperary. Its principal industries are pharmaceuticals, computer hardware, and construction engineering; there is also a meat-processing and tanning industry and the production of mineral water and cider. A 13th-century choir and a 15th-century tower are all that remain of the friary founded here in 1269.

During the plantation of Ireland by English settlers, Clonmel was purchased first by the Earl of Desmond in 1338, and later taken by the Earls of Ormond; Clonmel remained loyal to the English crown until the mid-17th century. The Mainguard in Sarsfield Street was built in 1674 as the seat of the counts of the palatinate of Ormond and was reputedly designed by Christopher Wren. The 19th-century Protestant church of St Mary, which has an octagonal tower, incorporates parts of a 15th-century church.

Clonmel was the birthplace of the novelist Laurence Sterne. Charles Bianconi (1786-1875) was mayor here and Hearn's Hotel was the first staging post in his pioneering national system of public transport. The town was a notorious centre of nationalism, and several notable figures were imprisoned and tried here, among them Father Nicholas Sheehy (1766).

The novelist Anthony Trollope lived in Clonmel while working for the Post Office in the 1850s. There is a county museum in Parnell Street.