Bilboa, County Laois

Bilboa
County Laois
Location
Grid reference:	S646723
Location:	52°47’54"N, 7°2’32"W
Data
Local Government
Council:	Graiguecullen

Bilboa is a tiny village in County Laois, running up to the border of County Carlow, which greets its easternmost edge on the Dinin River. Close by to the suth-west is the point where the borders of three counties meet Carlow, Laois and Kilkenny. A bridge, a short distance from the village and built around 1800, is known as the 'Three Counties Bridge'.

This is formerly a coal-mining village, sitting in a bleak and beautiful and forgotten part of the Castlecomer plateau that forms an expanse between the three counties.

Without coal there would have been little settlement at Bilboa. It remains but a little cluster of families struggling to maintain its identity and to survive as a distinct localised community. Of the early mining village, only the church remains.

Bilboa's Anglican church is a detached three-bay Tudor Revival Church of Ireland church, built 1846, with crenellated entrance tower and granite dressings including clasping buttresses on octagonal plans having pinnacles and hood mouldings to openings. Interior retains original pews.

Name

The tale about the original of the name 'Bilboa' recorded locally is that it is neither Irish nor English, but Basque. The tale is that one Colonel John Staunton Rochford (1802-1844) returned from fighting in the Napoleonic Wars. He was credited with some act of valour while fighting around the Spanish city of Bilbao, a name then frequently written 'Bilboa'. He became known as 'Rochford of Bilboa', whereas his family before him where the Rochfords of Clogrennene.

However the name is not unique: there is a Bilboa in County Limerick, whose name is from the Irish Béal Átha Bó, meaning 'fordmouth of cattle'. The County Laois village has its name rendered in Irish as Biolbó.

Later members of the Rochford family ensured the building of Bilboa Church in 1850.