Bandon

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Bandon, the largest and in economic terms most successful new town of the Munster plantation. Originally laid out as two towns on opposite banks of the river Bandon by minor players in the plantation, it was united under its second owner, Richard Boyle, 1st earl of Cork, and expanded greatly under his patronage to become the anchor and bastion of the New English colony in early 17th‐century west Cork. The town was walled and strongly fortified by 1618 (with Irish tenants and the unskilled clustered outside the walls). It remained under Protestant control throughout the Confederate War, but briefly passed into Jacobite control in 1689 (see williamite war), at which time the walls were comprehensively razed.

The distinctive feature of Bandon's urban economy for more than 200 years was high‐quality textile manufacturing, and the distinguishing characteristic of urban society for an even longer period was its strongly Protestant composition. Woollen and linen weaving in town and hinterland gave ground to cotton in the early 19th century, but the mill‐based prosperity of Bandon's cotton industry was short‐lived: employment collapsed in the 1820s, and the development of brewing and distilling in the town failed to halt the exceptional decline of the urban population. Its former role as a military town was also threatened after the end of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Population peaked at around 10,000 in the early 1820s, then fell by a third in the following 30 years, by a further 42 per cent in the next three decades, and by an additional 22 per cent by 1911 Catholics may have been in a majority in the town by 1800, but even in decline the strongly Protestant reputation of the town and its inner hinterland remained.

Bibliography

Simms, Anngret, and Andrews, J. H. (eds.), Irish Country Towns (1994)

David Dickson

Bandon (Droichead na Bandan) Cork. The Irish name of the town means ‘bridge on the Bandon’, while the river name itself may mean ‘goddess’.