Editing Celbridge (section)

==Historic buildings and places==

===Celbridge Main Street===
The development of the Main Street commenced with the building of [[Kildrought House]] by Joseph Rotheny in 1720 for Robert Baillie, a Dublin upholsterer who was William Conolly's greatest prospect as an improving tenant. A large extension, which included a malt house, was added after Baillie sold in 1749. Kildrought house became home to John Begnall's Academy after 1782. Among the attendees were the sons of [[George Napier|Col George Napier]], [[George Thomas Napier|George]], [[Charles James Napier|Charles]], [[William Francis Patrick Napier|William]] and [[Henry Edward Napier|Henry]], later to be collectively known as "[[Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington|Wellington]]'s Colonels, " and their younger brother [[Richard Napier]], and [[John Jebb (bishop)|John Jebb]] (1775–1833), later [[Church of Ireland]] bishop of [[Bishop of Limerick (Church of Ireland)|Limerick]], [[Bishop of Ardfert (Church of Ireland)|Ardfert]], and [[Bishop of Aghadoe (Church of Ireland)|Aghadoe]]. Jeremiah Haughton, owner of the Mill lived there after 1818. For a time in the early 19th century, Kildrought House had a cholera hospital attached to it and served as the local police barracks from 1831 to 1841 when the barrack moved to the site of the current Michaelangelo's restaurant. After 1861 it was leased by Richard Maunsell of Oakley Park. Next door is the courthouse where the local petty sessions took place every fourth week.<ref>A History of Celbridge by Tony Doohan (Celbridge Community Council 1984)</ref> It later became home of [[Lloyd Christian]], athletics pioneer and colleague of [[Michael Cusack (Gaelic Athletic Association)|Michael Cusack]] in the [[hurling]] revival of the 1880s.
	
[[File:Celbridgemainstreet.jpg|280px|thumb|right|Celbridge Main Street]]	
No. 22 Main Street, the original home of Conolly's second agent George Finey was occupied by [[Richard Guinness]] for a time and his sons [[Arthur Guinness|Arthur]], founder of the Guinness brewery, and Samuel. Richard [https://archive.org/details/op1253263-1001/page/n163 married Elizabeth Clare],<ref>Deputy Keeper of Public Records in Ireland : twenty-sixth report with appendix, HMSO, London, 1894, p163</ref> proprietor of the White Hart Inn, a public house at the site of the current Londis supermarket. Finey's successor as Conolly's agent, Dublin cabinetmaker Charles Davis, built Jessamine Lodge, an impressive fivebay house with a weather vane on the junction of Main Street and the Maynooth Road (1750). It was home to seven generations of Mulligans until 1992. One of the Mulligans had the decorative iron arch to the entrance gate constructed from material salvaged from the GPO Dublin after the 1916 Rising. The Castletown Inn stands where Isaac Annesley, the early 18th-century master stonemason, lived. One of the oldest houses in the town. No 59 next door, was renovated in the latter half of the 18th century for Thomas Conolly's huntsman. Christopher Barry's Auctioneers was built in 1840 by Richard Nelson and let to Chief Constable Marley, it replaced an old dwellinghouse with stables and offices where William Wadsworth, the original Irish Straw Manufacturer and exporter lived and operated at the end of the 19th century. On the corner of the Main Street and Liffey Bridge, Broe's house and shop (1773) is now the Bank of Ireland. Matthew Gogarty came from Clondalkin in 1818 and established his shop on the other side of the street. James Carberry's Brewery (1709) later became Coyles and eventually Norris's and the Village Inn. Roseville was built in 1796.
	
Other notable buildings on Main Street include the Catholic Church (1857 [[Joseph Connolly (architect)|JJ McCarthy]] Architect), the Holy Faith convent (1877) and Christ Church (Church of Ireland, 1884) which retains the tower of an earlier church (1813). Castletown gates at the end of the street were built in 1783 after a design inspired by [[Batty Langley]]. According to research by local historian Lena Boylan, the work was by a stonemason named Coates and a blacksmith named Behan.

===Temple Mills===
The oldest mill in the area is Temple Mills,<ref>Boylan, Lena, 'The Mills of Kildrought', JKAS, Vol 15 No 2, 1972, p154155</ref> operated by the Tyrrell family for 300 years, 2&nbsp;km outside the town on the [[Ardclough]] Road({{coord|53.33351|-6.54473|type:city_region:IE|format=dms|display=inline}}.). Joseph Shaw's flax and flour mills was a major employer in the town<ref>Irish Times, 27 September 1865</ref> until its closure after the death of William Shaw.<ref>Irish Times, 4 October 1871</ref><ref>Irish Times, 9 March 1888</ref>

====Templeplace: a vanished settlement====
The now disappeared "town" of Templeplace is recording as having a population of 279 in 1841, 310 in 1851, 382 in 1861, 402 in 1871 and was, after 1881, included in the townland of Newtown "on which it stood" as it "did not contain 20 inhabited houses." A footnote to the census returns comments "the decline in population is attributed to the discontinuance of the flax mill". The population of Newtown in 1891 was 128, down from 145.<ref>Census Returns 1881 p.&nbsp;260</ref>

===Celbridge Mill===
[[File:The Mill, Celbridge - geograph.org.uk - 1008068.jpg|thumb|The Mill]]

The Manor Mills (built by [[Lady Louisa Conolly|Louisa Conolly]] in 1785–1788, extended by Laurence Atkinson 1805, restored 1985) incorporate parts of the old Celbridge Market House. It was purchased by Jeremiah and Thomas Houghton after Atkinson's bankruptcy in 1815.<ref>Liverpool Mercury etc (Liverpool, England), Friday, 4 June 1813; Issue 101</ref> When the Houghton partnership became bankrupt in 1818 Jeremiah took charge of the operation.<ref>The Morning Chronicle (London, England), Friday, 25 September 1818</ref> [[Jeremiah Houghton|Houghton]] told a [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|parliamentary committee]] that this mill was the biggest wool manufactory in Ireland.<ref>Select Committee on Petitions of Clothiers, Woollen Manufacturers, Weavers and Drapers of Ireland, on Alnage Laws. Report, Minutes of Evidence, Appendix 1817 (315) p.&nbsp;5</ref> the mill was described as employing several hundred people when King [[George IV of the United Kingdom|George IV]] visited Celbridge in August 1821<ref>''Freeman's Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser'' (Dublin, Ireland), Tuesday, 19 June 1821</ref> and the description "biggest wool manufactory in Ireland" was repeated in the 1845 Parliamentary Gazetteer. It employed 600 people at full capacity, some of them children who were eight and nine years of age. Workers from Yorkshire who came to work in the mill lived in Tea Lane (so called because of the amount of discarded tea leaves on the street) and English Row. The closure of the mills in 1879 caused the population of Celbridge to plunge from a 19th-century peak of 1,674 in 1861 (1,391 in 1871) to 988 in 1881 and a low of 811 in 1891<ref>Footnote to the census returns, 1891.</ref><ref>''Irish Times'', 25 August 1881</ref>	
		
Under the Irish Government regeneration scheme of the 1930s, the Leinster Hand Weaving Company acquired the premises for conversion into a weaving mill.<ref>Irish Times, 3 October 1934</ref> Celbridge woollen mill was operated by Youghal carpets (acquired 1966,<ref>Irish Times, 1 June 1966</ref> workforce extended from 120 jobs in October 1969.<ref>Irish Times, 18 October 1969</ref>). It was a major employer until its closure in May 1982 with the loss of 220 jobs. This ended two centuries of intermittent wool production in the village. The mill now serves as a community centre. Its warehouses which bear a wallmount dating the Mill to 1785, and a stone commemorating the site of St Mochua's well.	
		
Mills at Coneyburrow (Newbridge, near St. Wolstan's) ({{coord|53.34768|-6.51256|type:city_region:IE|format=dms|display=inline}}.) were granted to Robert Randall, Dublin paper maker, in 1729, and were later converted for use as a flourmill.<ref>Boylan, Lena, Celbridge Charter, No. 177, May 1988</ref><ref>Phillips, James W, ''Printing & Bookselling in Dublin, 1670–1800'', Dublin, 1998</ref>

===Brewery===
After Richard Guinness married Elizabeth Read (1698–1742), of a brewing family from [[Bishopscourt, County Kildare|Bishopscourt]] and an aunt of [[Arthur Guinness]], he took over the town brewery in 1722 and moved it from the site of the Village Inn to where the entrance forecourt of the Holy Faith convent is today<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.kildare.ie/library/ehistory/2009/09/some_key_dates_in_celbridge_hi.asp|title=Co. Kildare Online Electronic History Journal|work=kildare.ie|access-date=7 May 2015|archive-date=9 January 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160109001328/http://www.kildare.ie/library/ehistory/2009/09/some_key_dates_in_celbridge_hi.asp|url-status=live}}</ref> There he placed his land steward Richard Guinness in charge of production of "a brew of a very palatable nature". In 1752, Dr Price's estate bequeathed £100 to Richard's son, the 27-year-old Arthur Guinness to help him expand the brewery, first in 1755 on a new site in [[Leixlip]] and from 1759 in [[Guinness Brewery|St James's Gate]] in [[Dublin]].<ref>Patrick Guinness; ''Arthur's Round:  The Life and Times of brewing legend Arthur Guinness''. Peter Owen, London 2008; pp.&nbsp;17–20, 218.</ref> Some of the blocked up doors from the original PriceGuinness brewery can still be seen on the perimeter walls of the Catholic Church forecourt.<ref>Maura Galagher: A tour of Celbridge</ref>

===Workhouse===
Celbridge [[workhouse]] was constructed between 1839 and 1841 and is the smallest of three [[Workhouse#Ireland|workhouses]] in County Kildare. It was built at a cost of £6,800 and was designed to house 519 people from Celbridge, Lucan, Rathcoole, Leixlip, Maynooth and Kilcock, an area containing 25,424 people.	
		
A site on the Maynooth road has a memorial to between 1,500 and 2,500 inmates who died and were buried there during the [[Great Irish Famine|Great Famine]] of 1845/47, subsequently restored by the community. According to Tony Doohan's "History of Celbridge" during the worst of this disaster, a human being died every hour. Another historian Seamus Cummins suggests that the effects of the famine in the Celbridge [[Poor Law]] District area were less traumatic than elsewhere (such as south Kildare) because of the availability of wage economy employment in the district.	
		
After the 1860s the workhouse was used as a fever hospital, regarded as progressive for its time, as a home for the elderly and infirm, and for unmarried mothers. Orphans and illegitimate children were fostered out into the village community from the workhouse and also from the [[Holy Faith Sisters|Holy Faith]] convents in Dublin.	
		
In 1922 the workhouse was used as a base by the [[Irish Army|Free State army]], was visited by General [[Michael Collins (Irish leader)|Michael Collins]] and there are claims that the barracks was the first in which the uniform of the new Free State army was worn. After 1923 the workhouse was closed and the barracks vacated. By 1933 the Union Paint factory had been established on the site and in 1934 there were plans for a rope factory by Henry's from Cork Street in Dublin. In 1939 the current [[Garda Síochána|Garda]] barracks was built on part of the workhouse site.

The workhouse is now a paint shop.

===Former Methodist Hall===

The cut stone former Methodist Hall on Ardclough Road fell into disrepair during the 1980s but was acquired and renovated by Cunninghams Funeral Directors<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.cunninghamsfunerals.com/Cunninghams-Celbridge.aspx|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20100908055222/http://www.cunninghamsfunerals.com/Cunninghams-Celbridge.aspx|url-status=dead|title=Cunninghamsfunerals.com|archivedate=8 September 2010}}</ref> in the mid-1990s.

===Other industry===
[[John Wynn Baker]] (c. 1730 – 1775), agricultural improver and writer, established the first factory in Ireland in 1765 with the financial assistance of the Dublin Society on a {{convert|354|acre|km2|adj=on}} property at Elm Hall on the Loughlinstown Road near the newly constructed [[Grand Canal (Ireland)|Grand Canal]] at [[Hazlehatch]] for manufacturing agricultural implements.	

One of Celbridge's most original industries was the Callender Paper Company established in Celbridge in 1903 to make paper from [[peat]]. Despite the report in the [[Irish Times]] of 25 June 1904 that facilities of the company were "totally inadequate to cope with demand" and that "Celbridge peat paper is finding its way into almost every village and hamlet in Ireland" the enterprise had already run into financial trouble by November 1904.	
		
In 1977 French electrical group [[Telemecanigue]] invested £6m in establishing a factory on the Maynooth Road, employing 500 people at peak. [[Schneider MGTE]] group closed the factory in September 2003.