1 June 1798
The Battle of Bunclody
On the morning of 1 June, around five thousand United Irishmen under Fr Mogue Kearns and Myles Byrne came down off the hills at the rebels' camp on Kilcumney Hill and attacked the garrison in what was then Newtownbarry. They had the numbers and the surprise and they took the town. Then they stopped to loot the whiskey stores. The Crown forces, who had pulled out under fire, regrouped, came back, and caught the rebels disorganised on the streets. Around four hundred United Irishmen were killed in an hour. The road north toward Dublin was closed at Bunclody and the rebellion in Wexford was forced south, toward Vinegar Hill three weeks later.
A name that came back
Newtownbarry to Bunclody
The town was Bun Clóidí - bottom of the Clody - for centuries before James Barry, a Dublin alderman and sheriff, was granted the lands in the 16th century and renamed it Newtownbarry. The Barry name stuck on the maps for the better part of four hundred years. After Irish independence the pressure to put the original name back grew, and in 1950 Wexford County Council ran a local ballot and a Dáil order made the change official. Older people in the town still slip and call it Newtownbarry. The post office took it off the postmark and never put it back.
A canal down the main street
The Mall
In the 19th century a channel was drawn off the River Clody and run down the centre of the wide main street to give Bunclody clean drinking water. The drinking-water need is gone, the canal is not. It runs down a tree-lined pedestrian island between the two carriageways, lined with limes, with benches and a bandstand and the town's annual festival when the time comes. It is the thing that makes the main street legible - half of Bunclody happens on the Mall.
A song that travelled
The Streams of Bunclody
The folk song Streams of Bunclody was written by a local emigrant in the 19th century and worked its way around the Irish ballad tradition for a hundred and fifty years. It was one of Luke Kelly's favourites. The town named the summer festival after it. If you have heard the song and not heard of the town, you have heard of the town now.
A GAA club on the other side of the line
Mount Leinster Rangers
The big GAA name in this corner of the country is Mount Leinster Rangers, a hurling club founded in 1887 and based in Borris on the Carlow side of the mountain. They won the All-Ireland Intermediate Club Championship in 2012 and have been the most successful Carlow hurling club of the last two decades. The mountain belongs to both counties; the trophy cabinet sits in Borris.