"The New York Daily Tribune"
5 August 1856
Six Days in Ireland”
... ... ...
... ... ...
On approaching Ennis, you first pass an enormous, handsome building, something between a barrack, a palace and a monastery. You enquire what it is: the Workhouse. Next comes another, still more handsome; in passing by it, you perceive its splendid Grecian front, facing the town, and the spacious and lofty terrace on which it is built. This is the Court-House; there is not a fitter Grecian building in all Ireland, and excepting St George’s Hall at Liverpool, scarcely one in England; and what a splendid, open elevated site it has! Then you descend into the town; a beautiful, shaded avenue, ending in a bridge, with a ruined abbey, all covered in ivy, in the background, leads to it; altogether you cannot imagine a more imposing and charming approach to a town, and you are led to expect something like a decent city. False alarm! You find a place holding at the best five or six thousand inhabitants, with a market place seven yards by twelve, not a single tolerable inn, and no end of pigs and hens about the street.
Whatever day of the month or hour of the day you may enter an Irish town, it is always market-day, and the whole population is in the streets. There was market at Oughterard when we came thither, and the bog-trotters, holding their pigs with straw ropes by the legs, stood waiting for customers. There was every preparation for a market-day going on at Gort, and the town of Ennis was in the full enjoyment of the fair, although what on earth they were selling and buying nobody could tell. There was also a whole regiment of militia rifles in the streets; for Ennis, beside the workhouse and court-house, is supplied with that other great lever of civilisation, a barrack, (not to mention the county prison) and the little dark-green English militiamen did certainly appear exceedingly comfortable among this laughing and rollicking people, whose principal occupation seemed to be the dolce far niente.
Ennis, 1856, and Irish fairs and markets
Moderators: Clare Support, Clare Past Mod