County Kilkenny - Towns

Near the Kilkenny-Tipperary, and therefore the Munster-Leinster, border, the engaging long village of Piltown is attractively presented. It is nationally famous in recent years for the presence of the Kildalton Agricultural College, Research Station and agricultural exhibition arena and was previously a Catholic seminary.

The present Garda (police) barracks was the former 19th century Market House built by the Lord Bessborough. The Ponsonby who lost his life in the Napoleonic Wars is commemorated in the Sham castle. The strange interaction of the Norman and Irish races, their culture and values, lend an eloquent message from the year 1462.. A battle took place at Piltown that year over the seemingly remote succession in England.

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Services in Slieveroe

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This town, in beautiful surroundings in the Nore valley, is named after Thomas Fitzanthony Walsh, Seneschal of Leinster, who built a wall around it early in the thirteenth century and erected a castle. The castle was destroyed by Cromwell in 1650. There are some interesting monuments among the ruins of a large thirteenth-century church contains the old high altar of Jerpoint Abbey.

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In Irish, Ath na nUrlaidhe, "the ford of the sledgings" according to O' Curry, where by tradition a battle was fought in the 10th century in which "the Irish and the Danes did sledge each other's heads". The ford from which the name of the pretty town is taken is marked by the bridge which crosses the River Gowl between the old parish church and the Butler Castle of Urlingford. The pre-formation church, though in a ruined condition, has substantially perfect walls.

A large church stood here long before the 12th century; it fell into ruins but was restored in the 13th century. The town is one of the newest in Ireland dating only from 1755, the site being partly a cut-away bog. In 1801 an assessment of progress recorded that the town contained 176 houses of which 4 were uninhabited and 5 unfinished, a distillery and a malt house.

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