Carlo Bianconi, 1815
The man who put Ireland on wheels
Charles Bianconi was born in northern Italy in 1786 and arrived in Ireland in 1802 as a travelling print seller. He ended up in Clonmel, read the roads correctly — the Napoleonic wars had ended, horses were cheap, there was no public transport in rural Ireland — and on 6 July 1815 sent his first two-wheeled car from what is now Hearn's Hotel on Parnell Street to Cahir. Within a generation his network connected 123 towns. He was twice elected mayor of Clonmel, became a friend of Daniel O'Connell, and died in 1875 having spent most of seventy years making Ireland smaller.
The Siege of Clonmel, 1650
Hugh Dubh outwits Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell laid siege to Clonmel in late April 1650 with 8,000 New Model Army soldiers and was in a hurry: Parliament needed him back in England. The town was defended by Hugh Dubh O'Neill with 1,200 Ulstermen and very little ammunition. When Cromwell finally breached the walls on 17 May, he sent his men through a gap that O'Neill had prepared as a killing ground — a V-shaped coupure lined with cannon loaded with chain-shot. The slaughter was severe. That night, O'Neill slipped the garrison out of town toward Waterford and left the mayor to negotiate terms. Cromwell, furious at the deception, nonetheless kept his word. It was his worst Irish defeat. The town was spared.
Laurence Sterne, 24 November 1713
Born here, barely
Laurence Sterne — the author of Tristram Shandy, one of the stranger novels in the English language — was born in Clonmel to a soldier's family while his father's regiment was quartered there. He spent only his first months in the town before the regiment moved on, and he grew up in poverty following the troops around Ireland. He never returned. The novel, published in 1759, would eventually be called the first postmodern novel, the most chaotic masterpiece in English prose, and various other things. Clonmel's connection to it amounts to: he was born here. That's enough.
Bulmers / Magners, 1935
Ireland's cider, twice-named
William Magner started making cider at Dowd's Lane in Clonmel in 1935 with a press and twelve oak barrels. Two years later the English firm H.P. Bulmer bought in and lent their name to the Irish market — which is why the cider is called Bulmers in Ireland and Magners everywhere else. The Annerville plant, five kilometres east of the town, was opened in 1965 by Taoiseach Seán Lemass. It still runs. The C&C Group, which now owns the whole operation, is one of Tipperary's larger employers.