Carlow Deighton Memorial Hall in Burrin Street, Carlow
was built around the mid 1700′s, and while it’s had a long and varied
past, it’s been lying empty and derelict for a number of years. Half of
the building was demolished in the 1920′s in order to install bathrooms
and a kitchen. It was once used as the county courthouse, a theatre, a
ballroom, a meeting place and a cinema.
The building, on the corner of
Burrin Street and Kennedy Avenue, has been sold to a well-known
businessman. It was another businessman in 1909, plumber Joseph
Deighton, who gave the premises its name and in the late nineteenth
century it housed the Deighton Plumbers & Vulcan Foundry & Ironworks.
Joseph Deighton later handed the building over to St Mary's Church of
Ireland parish for use as a parochial hall, and in the mid-twentieth
century it was used as a ballroom.
The Courthouse had been the location
of a number of Court martial's in the aftermath of the 1798 Rebellion in
Carlow. Up until the early 1830s this building functioned as the County
Courthouse and was the seat of the Grand Jury (forerunner of the County
Council). The prisoner holding cells were located in the basement with
direct access to the courtroom.