placenamesNewtown
The Grand Canal Company’s mining ambitions shaped Newtown near Crettyard, although the proposed waterway never reached the coalfield.
The name
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
- Newtown · English · main form
Place & story
A village for the collieries
Newtown developed through the Grand Canal Company’s involvement in the Doonane coalfield. The company leased mining ground in 1803 and established the village beside its workings. Engineer Richard Griffith’s 1814 account identifies the colliery’s earlier lands as Boulavoneen, subsequently called Newtown. He described a deep engine pit and numerous shallower workings, criticising the waste and expense of the methods used. The village’s beginnings thus belonged to a substantial, if troubled, industrial enterprise. [2]
Coal without a branch canal
The company intended to connect the coalfield with Athy by a branch canal, using a tunnel both to transport coal and help drain the mines. That scheme was abandoned in 1805. Coal instead travelled by cart to waterside depots, including Athy, before continuing by boat. Newtown’s industrial history is therefore connected with the canal network through road haulage and company ownership, rather than through a completed canal running into the village. [2]
The school and mining memory
Newtown National School opened at its present location in 1948, succeeding an earlier school at Fairymount. An extension in 2006 added two classrooms and an all-purpose hall. Its seventy-fifth anniversary celebrations in June 2023 included planting a memorial oak and burying a time capsule for a future generation. The school also adopted a new crest that year, explicitly commemorating the district’s coal-mining heritage. Local industrial memory continued within an institution established long after the early canal-company venture. [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Laois
- Barony
- Slievemargy
- Civil parish
- Killabban
- Within
- Clonbrock
- Coordinates
- 53.02188, -7.15932 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 28840 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Newtown. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- South of Moscow, north of Geneva · Brian J. Goggin, Irish Waterways History
- Tree planted, time-capsule buried and balloons released as Laois primary school celebrates 75 years, 22 June 2023 · Alan Hartnett, Laois Today
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2024-06-24. How this page was prepared.