A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
Laois· Irish · main form · validated name
Laois· English · main form
Leix· English · main form · historical name
Place & story
Find Queen’s County as well
Lewis files the county under Queen’s County in 1837 and locates it between Kildare, Carlow, Kilkenny, Tipperary and King’s County. Searches of older indexes and catalogues may consequently need Queen’s County as well as Laois.[2]
Gandon's unfinished commission
James Gandon began designing Emo Court in 1790, following his major Dublin commissions. Yet the neo-classical house was not completed for roughly another seventy years. It became the home of the earls of Portarlington and later a Jesuit novitiate, accommodating generations of trainees. Major Cholmeley-Harrison acquired it in the 1960s and restored it. That sequence makes Emo a story of interrupted construction and changing purposes. The architect's name is only the beginning of its history.[5]
People & connections
Women who sustained Mountmellick Work
Mountmellick's distinctive white-on-white embroidery gives the county a history of skilled work as well as grand houses. The local museum credits Johanna Carter with introducing the craft in 1825. Local plants supplied motifs, while white cotton fabric and thread made richly textured household pieces. Quaker teaching helped spread the skill. In the 1970s Sister Teresa Margaret McCarthy revived its practice, taught women locally and gathered historic and modern examples. Her collection later went to the museum. Carter and McCarthy therefore represent different stages in the craft's life: its nineteenth-century development and its twentieth-century recovery.[6]
A tradition carried by making
Mountmellick Work is a documented craft tradition, not a legend about the county's origins. Its history connects design, teaching, paid work and the preservation of objects. The museum records commercial activity in the nineteenth century and the opening of its dedicated museum in 2003. These surviving textiles and the continued teaching of stitches provide evidence of transmission between makers. They also broaden the county's story beyond the administrative names Queen's County and Maryborough, showing how a particular town's identity could travel through things made by hand.[6]
Figures cover the whole county including its cities. CSO recommends this series for long-term comparison, although minor boundary changes have occurred.
View population figures
County Laois, including its cities — census population
placenames