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community · Friday 24 July 2026 · 10:00am 
Portlaoise Women's Shed
At Portlaoise Library · 23 Lower Main Street, Portlaoise, Co. Laois
At Portlaoise Library · 23 Lower Main Street, Portlaoise, Co. Laois
Every Friday morning, a group of women gathers at Portlaoise Library for Portlaoise Women’s Shed, an informal weekly space built around craft, conversation and company rather than any fixed curriculum. The idea borrows from the Men’s Shed movement, adapted here into a library setting rather than a workshop, and it has become one of the library’s steady weekly fixtures. Anyone can turn up, there is no membership fee, no skill requirement and no obligation to attend every week.
The format is loose by design. Women bring their own projects, whether that is knitting, crochet, sewing or something else entirely, and work on them together in the library’s meeting space while chatting. Library staff open up the room and provide tea and coffee, but the group runs itself rather than following a set programme, and newcomers are folded in easily. It sits alongside a run of other weekly and monthly groups at Portlaoise Library, including a book club, a chess club and a scrabble club, all part of the library’s push to make the building a genuine community space rather than just somewhere to borrow books. The Shed format has proved popular enough that comparable sessions now run in other Laois libraries too.
Portlaoise Library is at 23 Lower Main Street, in the town centre and within walking distance of the train station on the Dublin-Cork and Dublin-Limerick lines.
Portlaoise’s Georgian courthouse and the county museum are both a short walk from the library. There is more to see in Portlaoise and across Co. Laois.
Heading to Portlaoise Library in Portlaoise? Laois has plenty more to see. Read the Portlaoise area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.
In town for Portlaoise Library? These Dublin tours book out in summer.