Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Clonmel
Ireland, in the province of Munster, partly in the south i-iding of Tipperary and partly in Waterford county, 104 miles south-west from Dublin. It is built on both sides of the Suir, and also occupies Moore and Long Islands, which are connected with the mainland by three bridges. The principal buildings are the parish church, two Roman Catholic churches, a Franciscan friary, two convents, an endowed school dating from 1685, a model school under the national board, a mechanics institute, a court-house aud prison, a fever hospital and dispensary, two lunatic asylums, a market-house, a workhouse, and barracks. Till the Union the woollen manufacture established in 1GG7 was extensively carried on. The town contains a brewery, flour-mills, and tanneries, publishes two newspapers, and has a considerable export trade in grain, cattle, butter, and provisions. The river is navigable for barges of 50 tons to Waterford. Clonmel is a station on the Waterford and Limerick Railway; it was the centre of a system, established by Mr Bianconi, for the conveyance of travellers on liglit iars, extending over a great part of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught. It is governed by a corporation, consisting of a mayor, free burgesses, and a commonalty, and returns one member to parliament. Population in 1851, 15,203 ;
in 1871, 10,112.
Cionmel, or Cluain mealla, the Vale of Honey, is a place of un doubted antiquity. In 1269 it was chosen as the seat of a Franciscan friary by Utho de Grandison, the first English possessor of the district: and it frequently comes into notice in the following centuries. In 1641 it declared for the Roman Catholic party, and in 1650 it was gallantly defended by Hugh O Xeal against the English under Cromwell. Compelled at last to capitulate, it was completely dismantled, and has never again been fortified. Sterne was born in the town in 1713.