A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
An Chorrchoill· Irish · main form · validated name
Prosperous· English · main form
Place & story
People & connections
An industrialist returning from India
Robert Brooke served in the East India Company's Bengal establishment before returning to Ireland. In 1780 he decided to found a cotton manufactory on his Kildare lands at Curryhills, naming the new settlement Prosperous. His plans expanded with political encouragement and parliamentary funding, but the undertaking never achieved financial stability. In 1786 its administration passed to trustees as debts mounted. Brooke subsequently became governor of St Helena, leaving an industrial project whose optimistic name survived its commercial difficulties.[2]
Manufacturing in print
The enterprise also generated contemporary argument about Ireland's economic future. A pamphlet published in 1783, Thoughts on the Establishment of New Manufactures in Ireland, used Brooke's Manchester-style manufactory as its subject. Kildare Libraries preserves a digitised copy. Its full title presented the work as the account of a friend writing from County Kildare. The publication records how a newly created village became an example in wider discussion about developing Irish manufacturing.[3]
The barracks in 1798
Prosperous later became one of the first centres of the 1798 uprising. A historical account published in the Leinster Leader in 1939 describes the assault on its barracks at about two in the morning on 24 May. Captain Swayne commanded a garrison drawn from militia and cavalry units. The United Irishmen's attack placed the former industrial settlement at the beginning of a very different national story, less than two decades after Brooke had launched his cotton venture.[4][2]
Both counts use the 2016 settlement boundary, allowing like-for-like comparison. CSO supplies the 2022 count on this older boundary for comparison only. The official 2022 Built Up Area has different boundaries.
View population figures
Prosperous — Census 2016 settlement footprint — census population
Prosperous, Kildare — Census town, CSO 2006 report
2002–2006: census town
1,939people · 2006
These are the historical areas published in the 2006 census report. Boundaries may differ between censuses and from modern settlements. Legal towns, environs and suburbs are shown separately; none has been combined into a modern settlement total.
View population figures
Prosperous, Kildare — Census town, CSO 2006 report — census population
Prosperous, Kildare — Census town, CSO 1996 report
1991–1996: census town
814people · 1996
These are the historical areas published in the 1996 census report. Boundaries may differ between censuses and from modern settlements. Legal towns, environs and suburbs are shown separately; none has been combined into a modern settlement total.
View population figures
Prosperous, Kildare — Census town, CSO 1996 report — census population
These figures use different area definitions. Read the boundary note before comparing them.
Prosperous, Kildare
Published census settlement populations
2,333people · 2016
Settlement boundaries changed during this period. Differences may reflect boundary changes as well as population change. Where a 2011 legal-town-and-environs count is shown, it has not been recalculated onto the 2016 settlement boundary.
placenames