St. Brigid’s
Hospital
formally Whitmore’s Hotel
Whitmore’s Hotel, now
St. Brigid’s
Hospital, was another of the posting inns dating from stagecoach
days. In 1842 it was listed as belonging to “Samuel Whitmore
(family and posting hotel).” About this time, Mr. Whitmore added a
ballroom which became the fashionable centre for the nobility and
gentry of the day and was the scene of many a genteel Quadrille,
party and county ball. Ten of the bedrooms in Whitmore’s Hotel
were “furnished to repletion with four-post Albert and French
mahogany bedsteads, hair mattresses,” etc. The stables included
seventeen carriages and cars (some of them little used), an
omnibus and a hearse for two or four horses with black and white
plumes, and there were ten horses, young and fresh, suited for
either posting or the farm.”
Just over 100 years ago Whitmore’s was The
Hotel of Carlow, for we read in the “Handbook for Travellers in
Ireland” dated 1844: -“The principal inn is the Club House,
Whitmore’s, where good post horses and carriages can be
obtained.” And when Mr. Lacy of “Home Sketches” fame was in Carlow
in that very year, in that year, in connection with the laying of
the railway line to Carlow, he put up at Whitmore’s.
One of the last great ceremonies for
which Mr. Whitmore had to make the arrangements was held not in
the Club House Hotel but in the Assembly Rooms. This was a banquet
for the Officers of the County Carlow who had fought in the
Crimean War; there were 65 persons present. The dinner was
supplied by Mr. Whitmore “to whose superintendence it did great
credit. All the delicacies and variety of the season were in
great profusion, and the juice of the generous grape helped to
spread its cheering influence on all the company.”
Mr. Whitmore gave up the Hotel and
Posting Establishment in 1857 and the effects were sold by public
auction in October of that year. It was then, or later, taken over
by Mr. Arthur Barrow and has been referred to as The Barrow
Hotel.’ Towards the end of the last century it was known as “The
County Club House” and “Livery Stables” and Hunt Balls and similar
functions were still being held there by the gentry of the Co.
Carlow.
Source: Carloviana 1959 & 2005
