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Return
to Kilmacow
Forward
The Four
Parishes.
Kilmacow
in the Middle Ages.
Eighteen
Century
Sports and
Pastimes
Kilmacow
Cricket Team c.1890*
The Flour Mills
* (Please
note this is a Large File)
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There can be no doubt that the cereal
growing and stock raising in the manorialised regions of South kilkenny
continued at a high level until the opening decades of the 14th. century,
falling off steeply thereafter for reasons below, levelling out around the
beginning of the following century at about half to two-thirds of there
former level. The climate which was warm and mild from 900 to 1300, began
about this period to get wet and cold and it is recorded that it remained
so for the next 400 years with a drop of 2 degrees in temperature.
Black Death.
Before the economy had an
opportunity to fully recover, disaster struck again in the form of the
great epidemin of bubonic plague known as the 'Black Death' accompanied by
other diseases which spread from Asia to Western Europe in 1348 - 1350.
The plague first appeared in the Port of Waterford in the Autumn of 1348
and was transferred by fleas (carried by the black rat). As the risk of
infection was increased by social contact, townspeople in nearby Waterford
and the newly built Norman settlements suffered more severly than the
rural Gaelic communities in this area.
Kathleen Laffan.
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the Author
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