Built c. 1813 on a 57-acre site owned by Sir John Craven Carden (1757–1820), Richmond Barracks, when completed, was one of the largest in Ireland. Over the course of the nineteenth century it saw a large throughput of regiments, but by 1909 the barracks had been vacated. Templemore Town Council was informed by the War Office that there was ‘no prospect of troops being quartered there in the near future’. At the outbreak of the Great War, however, Richmond was deemed suitable for the detention of German prisoners of war because Templemore was an ‘inland town with limited traffic connections, and limited possibilities of escape’. (National Photographic Archive)
