Carlow Poor Law Union

Carlow Union Workhouse

Carlow Union Workhouse was constructed in the years c1842-1844 on a site on the Kilkenny Road, Carlow. It was designed to accommodate 800 inmates and cost £9,000 to build. It was demolished in the 1960's. This photograph was taken by Jim Banbury for the Office of Public Works c.1955.

Dept of the Environment & Local Government Photographic Unit

Carlow Union Workhouse
Dept of the Environment & Local Government Photographic Unit

Carlow Union Workhouse

Carlow Union Workhouse was constructed in the years c1842-1844 on a site on the Kilkenny Road, Carlow. It was designed to accommodate 800 inmates and cost £9,000 to build. It was demolished in the 1960's. This photograph was taken by Jim Banbury for the Office of Public Works c.1955.

Dept of the Environment & Local Government Photographic Unit

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Carlow was slow to adopt the Poor Law. The Carlow Union was not formally set up until September 1840. The adjoining Unions of Shillelagh, Baltinglass and New Ross had already been established. George Wilkinson's impressive design for the Carlow Workhouse was published in the Seventh Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners in 1841. But it was some years (1844) before the Workhouse was ready to receive its first inmates.

James Warren Doyle (J.K.L.) the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, a national figure who lived in Carlow had already championed a Poor Law System for Ireland two decades earlier.