Fort of Maryborough

Fort of Maryborough rose beside the Triogue around 1560 as a square limestone weapon against the midlands, its twelve-metre north-east bastion still thick enough to suggest the weight of rifles, cannons or fearful men. It stopped being a fort when Colonel John Hewson broke part of it open in 1652-3, then became barracks, schools, houses and a mill depot, until the wall disappeared into gardens and the fort became the town. What remains is not a display case but a lived boundary: Portlaoise grew inside the lines drawn for defence, and the old angle of that weapon is still visible in the shape of its streets.