About Tullamore
The history, geography, and character of Tullamore.
Tullamore, Tulach Mhór, the great mound, is the county town of Offaly and had 15,598 people at the 2022 census. It sits on the Grand Canal in the middle of the county and the middle of the country, and it earns its living as a services town: the county council, the courthouse, the Midland Regional Hospital, the shops and the business parks. Visitors tend to arrive for the whiskey, the Show or the canal, and find a busy, ordinary midlands town that happens to have all three.
History & Heritage
An estate town
Tullamore grew as an estate town. In 1622 the English Crown granted the lands to Sir John Moore, and through his descendants they passed in 1674 to the Bury family, who later took the title Earls of Charleville and built Charleville Castle in the demesne on the south-west edge of town. The town became the county town in 1835, taking the title from Daingean, which is why the county courthouse and the county council are here.
The fire and the phoenix
On 10 May 1785 a hot-air balloon came down in the town and set fire to thatched roofs. The fire spread house to house, and the surviving accounts disagree on how many were lost: a letter printed in the Hibernian Magazine two days later put it at about 100, other reports at 130. Offaly History, which has gone through those sources, treats the later retellings with some caution. The town's answer was the phoenix on its shield, and a Phoenix Festival with balloons and fireworks ran in August between 2000 and 2007.
The canal and the harbour
The Grand Canal reached Tullamore from Dublin in 1798. A harbour was planned with a hotel for the passengers arriving by boat, the contract for the work was let in 1801, and warehouses went up along Bury Quay for the trade going in and out by barge. Offaly History's canal series notes that the canal arrived while the town was still recovering from the fire, which is part of why the harbour quarter was planned as a piece. The canal is no longer a commercial route, but the towpath is now part of the Grand Canal Way and the Offaly greenway, and boats still tie up by Bury Bridge.
Whiskey, gone and back
There were distilleries in Tullamore in the 1780s, and Michael Molloy opened the one that mattered in 1829. It passed through his family to the Dalys, and the business was run by its general manager, Daniel E. Williams, whose initials gave Tullamore Dew its name; Williams also brought electricity to the town in 1893. Prohibition, the economic war of the 1930s and the Second World War all hit the trade, and the town-centre distillery shut in 1954. For years afterwards the revived brand was made elsewhere, at first at Midleton in Co. Cork. In 2014 its owners, William Grant and Sons, opened a new distillery at Clonminch on the edge of Tullamore, and the old Bury Quay heritage centre, which closed in 2020, is now the Old Warehouse bar and restaurant.
The Show
If you ask anyone in Offaly what happens in Tullamore in August, the answer is the Show. The Tullamore Show and FBD National Livestock Show is a one-day agricultural show on the second Sunday of the month, with livestock, horses, dogs, baking, crafts and trade stands. It used to be held in the Charleville demesne, was cancelled in 2007 and 2008 after heavy rain, and moved to better-drained ground at Blueball, south of the town. In 2026 it was held on 9 August at the Butterfield Estate. The National Ploughing Championships came to Screggan, just outside Tullamore, in 2016 and 2017 as well.
What is closed, for now
Two of the area's best-known sights are not open to visitors at the moment. Charleville Castle, the Gothic Revival house in the demesne, is run by a voluntary heritage trust, and its own site says public tours are paused until further notice while projects and essential works take place. Durrow, a short drive north of the town, where St Columcille founded a monastery in the sixth century, has a celebrated high cross, but the church that shelters it has been closed since about 2020 and Offaly History reported in March 2025 that there is no public access to the cross. Both are worth checking again before a future visit.
Wildlife & Nature
Birdlife
Wetland and bog birds at Lough Boora
Lough Boora Discovery Park, west of the town, says over 130 resident and migrant bird species have been recorded across its lakes and cut-away bog, and it keeps a grey partridge conservation area where dogs must be on a lead.
Spring and autumn migration
Flora
The King Oak, Charleville
A very large and old oak just inside the main entrance to the Charleville demesne, whose spreading lower branches the Bury family once propped with timber. Offaly History records that the family believed a fallen branch meant a death in the family. Its age is not reliably known.
Year-round; check access, as the castle's tours are paused