Page 85 - GAHS Journal Volume 9

GREYSTONES ARCHAEOLOGICAL & HISTORICAL SOCIETY JOURNAL VOLUME 9

Tinahely soap-boiling was carried on, there was also an
extensive flour-mill and a tan-yard.

Then in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
we remember the factories like Kynoch in Arklow that
grow rapidly to support multiple wars in various regions of
the world only to disappear just as quickly following
accident and rationalisation on a world-wide scale.

Labour

Population

Ptolemy has intimated that the inhabitants of this part of
the island were the Cauci, supposed to have been of
Belgic-Gaulish extraction. However locally, it is chiefly
celebrated as the country of the Byrnes and the O’Tooles,
the former of whom occupied the northern and eastern
parts, and the latter the south-western.

The Central Statistics Office holds population figures back
to the census of 1841 and the figures for County Wicklow
are shown in [9].

In 1841 the population of Ireland was taken as 6,528,799.
In County Wicklow there is a clear decrease in the
numbers from 126,143 in 1841 to 60,824 in 1901,
probably due to the famine, land clearance, and
emigration. The effect of the first and second world wars
are just noticeable from 1914 to 1942 with a bounce back
soon afterwards. Then again, a decline as many left
through lack of work. There is an exponential rise in
numbers from 1966 to 1979 then a slightly less rapid
growth to the latest figure of 136,640 in the census of
2011. The female and male numbers have remained

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