Maryborough

Maryborough, a market town and the county town of Queen's County, Ireland. Pop. (1901), 2957. It lies in the broad lowland east of the Slieve Bloom mountains, on the river Triogue, an affluent of the Barrow, and on the main line of the Great Southern & Western railway, by which it is 51 m. W.S.W. of Dublin. The town was chosen as county town in the reign of Mary (1J56), in whose honour both town and county received their names. Its charter was granted in 1570, but its present appearance, save a bastion of the ancient castle, is wholly modern. There are flour-mills and a considerable general trade. Maryborough returned two members to the Irish parliament from 1585 until the union in 1800. The singular lofty rock of Dunamase or Dunmall, about 3 m. from the town, bears on its summit extensive ruins of a castle, originally belonging to the kings of Leinster, but probably built in the main by William Bruce (c. 1200) and dismantled in 1650 by Cromwell's troops.