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County Kilkenny · Leinster

Thomastown

Baile Mhic Andáin

named after its 13th-century founder Thomas FitzAnthony; it replaced an Irish settlement called Grennan (Grianán, 'sunny place'); the Irish form is not explained in the sources

👥 2,305 (census 2022) 🏔 County Kilkenny Source: Wikipedia ↗
The story

A Kilkenny market town at a bridging point on the Nore, a river known for salmon and trout, with Jerpoint Abbey and Kilfane Glen nearby. It was founded in the 13th century by Thomas FitzAnthony, a Welsh Anglo-Norman, and named for him. Local tradition holds that St Nicholas himself lies at Jerpoint, brought home, it is said, by Irish-Norman crusaders. Water-powered mills ran on the river here until the last closed in 1963.

County Kilkenny through the ages →
The history of Thomastown

Thomas FitzAnthony, an Anglo-Norman mercenary from Wales who became Seneschal of Leinster, founded the town in the 13th century at an important crossing, replacing the Irish settlement of Grennan. He built fortifications here and nearby Grennan Castle, and died in 1229. The town thrived, with more than 200 burgesses by the end of the 13th century, and its first walls were built in 1449. Several monarchs granted it charters, and under Mary I's charter of 1553 the burgesses chose two MPs until the Act of Union in 1800. In 1650 Cromwell attacked, and Grennan Castle surrendered after a two-day siege.

Jerpoint Abbey nearby was founded in 1183 and dissolved in 1540; beside it the medieval village of Newtown Jerpoint had fallen into ruin by the 17th century. Local tradition says a band of Irish-Norman knights from Jerpoint brought back the remains of St Nicholas from the Crusades, and that they lie in Jerpoint Park. For centuries boats carried produce between the town and New Ross, a trade that declined at the end of the 18th century, and milling was the main industry until the early 1960s.

Drawn from the History section of the Wikipedia article on Thomastown ↗, rewritten here and adding nothing it does not say; licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Castles and monuments within 15 km

Straight-line distances from the town centre, from each site's documented coordinates.

Worth seeing nearby
  • St Mullin’s · Moling founded this in the early 7th century and is said to have dug the mill race himself. The Book of Mulling, written here in the 8th century, carries the earliest known plan of an Irish monastery — four crosses inside the wall and eight outside.
  • Dunmore Cave · Where the annals say Vikings massacred a thousand people in 928. Bones of women and children were found inside in 1973 — and a Viking silver hoard in 1999.
  • Kells Priory · Three acres walled and studded with tower houses, which is why it is known locally as the Seven Castles — it looks less like a priory than a fortress. Founded about 1193, and burned three times in its first 150 years, once by Edward Bruce’s army on Palm Sunday 1316.
  • Kilkenny — the burning of Petronilla · Bishop Ledrede accused the moneylender Alice Kyteler of feeding a demon and killing four husbands. Kyteler slipped away. Her maid Petronilla de Meath, tortured into confessing, was flogged and burned on 3 November 1324 — the first such burning in Ireland, and it fell on the servant.
  • St Mullin’s — the death of Mad Sweeney · Cursed by Rónán to wander as a bird-man and to die by a spear, Suibhne ends here in Moling’s care, drinking milk from a hollow in cow dung. Moling’s herdsman, believing a rumour about him, put the spear in — and the curse was complete.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.

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