The history of Bagenalstown courthouse, Co. Carlow

In the absence of archival material , myths and legends can easily congregate around buildings and even whole towns. Many Irish people believe that their local nineteenth-century barracks, hospital, or school was destined to be built in India instead of Ireland, yet these are little more than myths. Local folklore has it that an architect or civil servant accidentally dropped the building’s drawings in the ‘Ireland’ pigeon-hole instead of the ‘India ’ one in some dim imperial office in London , and so an ‘Irish’ building now stands incongruously in some Asian desert, and an ‘Indian’ building – often, it is said, with Gothic turrets or polychromatic Italianate belvederes–ended up somewhere in the Irish landscape. It is unlikely any of these stories will ever be proven to be true. [First paragraph]