The Story of the Borris Name

The Irish name An Bhuiríos comes from the older Irish word bhuiríos, meaning “burgage land”—land associated with a borough or town settlement. The Placenames Database of Ireland records An Bhuiríos as the Irish form of Borris and gives the historical forms Burres, Borish and Burrish.

Borris lies in the fertile Barrow Valley, beneath the Blackstairs Mountains. The River Barrow has always been central to the area's story, providing a natural route through the countryside and helping Borris develop as a settlement and center of trade. Carlow Tourism describes it as a Georgian granite town, with many of its nineteenth-century buildings remarkably well preserved.

The history of Borris is particularly closely tied to the MacMurrough Kavanagh family, descendants of Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster. The Kavanaghs have been associated with Borris since the sixteenth century, and Borris House, their ancestral home, stands at the heart of the town. The present house dates from the eighteenth century and occupies the site of an earlier medieval castle.

The Kavanagh connection makes Borris unusual among Ireland's great country-house estates. The family traces its ancestry directly to the ancient Gaelic kings of Leinster, and Borris House is regarded as a particularly distinctive example of an Irish estate rather than simply an Anglo-Irish plantation house.

Borris flourished particularly in the nineteenth century. Arthur MacMurrough Kavanagh, the landlord of the time, developed a sawmill and encouraged local industry. One of the most famous products was Borris lace, introduced around 1857 by Lady Harriet Kavanagh as a way of providing desperately needed employment for local women during the difficult years surrounding the Great Famine. The intricate lace eventually became known well beyond Ireland.

The railway also left its mark on the town. Kavanagh supported the construction of the remarkable sixteen-arch Borris Viaduct, which carried the railway line across the Barrow valley. Although the railway has long since disappeared, the granite viaduct remains one of the most striking landmarks in the area.

Today, Borris retains much of its nineteenth-century character, with rows of granite buildings climbing the main street and the walls of the Kavanagh estate rising above them.

But the Irish name reaches further back than the Georgian town.

An Bhuiríos — the burgage land — preserves the memory of Borris as a town settlement, while the buildings and surrounding landscape tell the later story of Gaelic kings, the Kavanaghs, industry, lace and life along the Barrow.

Borris is a wonderful example of a place where Ireland's ancient Gaelic past remained remarkably present within the later town that grew around it.