1336–2006
The Franciscan friary
James Butler, 1st Earl of Ormond, granted the riverside site to the Franciscan Conventuals in 1336. The friary stood here until Henry VIII's dissolution in 1540, when the lands reverted to the Butlers. The friars came back to Carrickbeg in 1669 — first to a thatched house, later to St Francis's Church built alongside the medieval ruin in 1822. The square belfry tower of the original friary, with a fine spiral stair in its wall, was incorporated into the present parish church across the road. The Franciscan presence ended on Easter Saturday, 2006, when the last friars left after six hundred and seventy unbroken years.
1447
The Old Bridge
Edmund MacRichard Butler — known to history as Edmund the Builder — raised the first stone bridge over the Suir at Carrick in 1447. Eight arches, the only crossing between Clonmel and the sea for the next three hundred years. Cromwell's army of 7,500 men marched over it in 1649 on their way to Waterford. In 1799, the worst inland drowning tragedy in Irish history happened beneath these arches, when a market-day crowd was lost to the river — a hundred dead, by the contemporary count. The two western arches were rebuilt around 1925 as a single navigation arch. The rest is the bridge that Edmund built.
Two counties, one town
The line under the bridge
Carrick-on-Suir is one town and two counties. The Suir is the boundary between Tipperary and Waterford, and the bridge is the seam. Carrickbeg has its own post office, its own primary school, its own parish — all of them Waterford. The big town up the hill on the north bank is Tipperary. People shop, drink and worship across the line every day, and then go home to whichever council deals with the potholes. The arrangement is ordinary here and confusing everywhere else.