This book is concerned with the management of a small estate, the property of the O'Briens, which also happened to contain the important town of Carlow, in a time of major change in Ireland; the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It charts the economic problems that beset it during and after the Williamite War and examines the slow pace of recovery until the botched sale of the manor to James Hamilton in 1721. There is also an attempt to reconstruct the physical and built environment of the time from surviving records. Evidence of a major fire in the town in 1693 is investigated. There is also a discussion of the economic activity of the area.