These Irish name elements are associated with this record in the Logainm glossary.
An element’s translation is a clue, rather than a complete explanation of the name. Its form and meaning depend on local history and the full Irish name.
Recorded forms
Cluain Meala· Irish · main form · validated name
Clonmel· English · main form
Place & story
The breach in 1650
Clonmel's defences became the setting for a costly encounter during Cromwell's Irish campaign. A heritage project drawing on participants' accounts describes the assault on 17 May 1650, when attackers entered a breach and encountered a defensive trap prepared by Hugh Dubh O'Neill. Heavy losses followed.[2]
People & connections
Laurence Sterne's birthplace
Laurence Sterne, later the author of Tristram Shandy, was born in Clonmel on 24 November 1713. The Dictionary of Irish Biography explains the immediate reason: his father, an army ensign, had been posted there after service abroad. This is a precise but brief connection.[3]
People & connections
Charles Bianconi's first route
Charles Bianconi began a passenger service between Clonmel and Cahir in July 1815. His early carriage carried passengers, goods and mail, offering an alternative to expensive and unreliable rural travel. The Dictionary of Irish Biography describes the business's uncertain beginning and its subsequent expansion to other towns. Clonmel was therefore a working base for an immigrant entrepreneur whose transport network would reach across much of Ireland.[4]
A network made in Clonmel
Bianconi's cars were manufactured in his Clonmel workshops, with later factories elsewhere. As the routes expanded, coaching inns and connections linked places that had previously been difficult to reach cheaply. The end of the Napoleonic wars helped make horses available, while changes in carriage taxation created opportunities to buy vehicles. These practical circumstances belong beside the founder's initiative. Clonmel supplied routes, workshops and a base for the expanding network.[4]
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
Clonmel — Census 2016 settlement footprint — census population
These figures use different area definitions. Read the boundary note before comparing them.
Clonmel, Tipperary — 2011 legal town and environs; 2016 census settlement
Published census settlement populations
17,140people · 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.
View population figures
Clonmel, Tipperary — 2011 legal town and environs; 2016 census settlement — census population
placenames