CLONMEL?Wide streets, elegant buildings and healthcare companies with lots of jobs attract many to the town of 'sweet Clonmel', writes Michael Parsons

THE ROAD south passes through a valley near Slievenamon, that most iconic and evocative of Irish mountains and inspiration for a song that can reduce big strong Tipperary men to tears. The surrounding countryside is lush with rich pasture stocked with some of the world's most thoroughbred bloodstock.

Poor farmers, how are you? Presumably they're all growing hedge funds.

Coolmore, the Ritz Hotel of the equine world, is a mere gallop away. Continue through the roundabouts of Kilheffernan and Moangariff en route to the town which lies, most pleasantly, on the banks of the River Suir.

"Sweet Clonmel" was poet Edmund Spenser's 16th century description in The Faerie Queene and, as Gaeilge, Cluain Meala means "the honey meadow".

Sweet, though, doesn't mean soft-centred. Don't mess with Clonmel. In 1650 its defenders inflicted the biggest-ever one-day casualties suffered by Cromwell's New Model Army - although the town eventually fell to a siege.

This is the heartland of respectable Republicanism. The street names - O'Connell, Sarsfield, Parnell, Mitchell - honour the memory of national heroes, but Clonmel doesn't hold grudges. So Gladstone and Nelson streets survive.

A council road worker, spotting a notebook, said: "I hope you're going to write something good about us."

Well, he needn't have worried. Clonmel is a fine town with attractive public buildings, elegant central streets, comfortably wide footpaths and sensible traffic management.

But many of the family-owned businesses - which offer contemporary shopping with old-fashioned (and charming) personal service - face stiff competition from shopping centres on the periphery.

Premier Meats, on tree-lined Gladstone Street, is a gleaming craft butcher's shop with a range of locally sourced meats presented to the standards of Harrods Food Hall.

Proprietor Tom Power chatted to customers by first name and commented cheerfully: "Lack of parking is driving many people to edge-of-town shopping centres but, overall, business is still good and the town is vibrant."

On O'Connell Street, John O'Gorman is the third generation of his family in a drapery business founded by his grandfather in 1922. His father, also John (79), remembers "selling sports coats for 25 shillings and flannel trousers for 15". The shop is no fusty relic - and stocks a range of elegant men's clothes as well as offering a made-to-measure suit service (now contracted out to Portugal as "all the local tailors have gone"). O'Gorman Sr recalls: "Clonmel and Tralee were always considered to be the number one inland towns in Ireland. Better parking, more tourists and a few new hotels are needed," he says, and is confident that "Clonmel will come again".

Indeed, it will. Plans for the town include new hotels and a multi-storey car-park while some of the vacant shops could be transformed into much-needed new restaurants. At the end of O'Connell Street stands the landmark West Gate through which the "natives" were once banished into Irishtown of an evening.

Pass through it to visit Hickey's Bakery & Café for tea and famously delicious brack. Slices come ready buttered - now there's service!

Dominating the centre of town is Clonmel's loveliest building, the imposing Main Guard, a courthouse built in 1675 by the first Duke of Ormonde, and handsomely restored by the Office of Public Works.

Opposite the town hall, Hearn's Hotel, "established 1792", recalls 'auld dacency', and is the site of the original Bianconi coach house. Charles (Carlo) Bianconi came to Ireland from Italy in 1802 at the age of 16, lived to be 90 and, during his extraordinary life, the man whose boyhood dream was "to own much land and many white horses" established Ireland's first public (and integrated) transport system.

He's not the only famous name associated with the town. A bronze statue of Frank Patterson dominates Mick Delahunty Square. Sculpted by Jerry McKenna, the plinth is inscribed "Ireland's Ambassador of Song, born Clonmel 1938 . . . died New York 2000".

On Dowd's Lane, the heady smell of fermenting apple juice leads to the original home of Bulmers cider.

Here, according to a company poster, "the master cider makers still work" although most operations have moved outside town to Annerville close to the company's orchards. The drinks company, now owned by C&C, is an important employer but most jobs these days are provided by the healthcare companies, including Abbott and Merck Sharp & Dohme which attract many new residents to the town.

Outside the County Museum, Bernadette Corr who moved to Clonmel from Dublin 17 years ago, with her husband Tom Corr (now editor of local paper The Nationalist) and four children, says she found it "a very welcoming town".

The people are "very friendly, there's fantastic industry, the schools are terrific and there's a brilliant hospital".

Her children "had a great upbringing with access to forests, hill-walking and swimming in the river". She adds "you can have a lovely life here".

Tom Pollard, of Pollard & Co/Property Partners, has been in the auctioneering business for 40 years and says "the Clonmel property market is doing very well with great demand from people relocating to work at the big pharmaceutical companies who are recruiting all the time".

They'll find "good schools; a good hospital; lovely walks; and you can play golf on a whim".

He's currently selling new McInerney-built houses at Glencarra, an estate on the Fethard Road, where prices for three-bed semis start at €249,500, four-bed semis from €299,500 and four-bed detached houses from €350,000.

More upmarket homes, such as the four and five-bed detached houses at the Powerstown Way development near the racecourse, range from €450,000 to €560,000. Pollard says there is plenty of serviced land available for development around the town and that Clonmel has sorted out the sewerage capacity problems plaguing many provincial towns and hindering development.

At Stokes & Quirke Ltd, established in 1896, John Stokes, the "fifth generation to run the family-owned business", says Clonmel's affluence is due to the combination of "a strong agrarian base and great industrial employers".

Newcomers "find people are very friendly" and househunters "get great value for money".

He points to a wide range of property at all price levels from village homes in outlying Kilsheelan, six miles from the town centre, where "three-bed semis on the Ivowen estate cost from €214,000 to €220,000" to a new development of "luxury homes" at Glenconnor off the Cahir Road where detached houses on a 26-acre site are priced "in excess of €750,000".

Pat Quirke is the "third generation in a straight line" to run P F Quirke & Co, founded by his grandfather in the 1920s. He described Clonmel as "an exceptionally good commercial town" with a steady inflow of people to work for "very good employers" in the "resilient" healthcare sector. "Most people who move here are in their thirties and forties, and it's a good place to raise a family," he adds.

As a result, there's "a bigger demand for expensive detached houses than in other similar-sized towns around the country". Among Clonmel's "best addresses" are Marlfield Road and Coleville Road, where prices can reach €1 million.

He mentions Gortnamanach, a new development of four and five-bed detached houses on the Cahir Road being built by Hally Brothers, "a very reputable and well-recognised firm of local builders".

The current phase of 24 houses (from 167-240sq m/1,800-2,500sq ft) range from €400,000 to €530,000.

There are pockets of nice Georgians including "a very fine row" of townhouses on Anne Street which "rarely come up for sale" but would fetch, depending upon condition, from €350,000 to €600,000.

And what about period country houses?

"Lots were burned" said Quirke; "remember, Tipperary is a very Republican county". The State's founders would be proud of Clonmel.