placenamesBurt
An Bheart
Speenoge and the wider Burt district retain a history of education, landed property and church building alongside the better-known modern circular church.
The name
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
- An Bheart · Irish · main form
- Burt · English · main form
Place & story
Schools in the historic Burt parish
Lewis’s 1837 account describes the historic parish of Burt beside Lough Swilly, formerly part of Templemore. The Dean of Derry supported a parochial school with about forty boys and four girls. Three fee-paying schools taught around eighty boys and thirty girls, and three Sunday schools also operated. This account concerns the earlier parish landscape; the modern electoral district bearing the same name is a separate administrative unit. [2]
Burt House at Speenoge
At the time of Griffith’s Valuation in the 1850s, James G. Bowen leased Burt House from Lord Templemore’s estate. The University of Galway’s property record gives its valuation as £28 and places it in Speenoge, within Burt electoral division. The record also notes the architectural survey’s association with the Ferguson family and its suggestion that the house represents extensive remodelling of an earlier building, rather than an entirely new residence. [3]
John Ferguson’s church of 1868
The former Christ Church at Speenoge was designed by Derry architect John G. Ferguson and built by Alexander McElwee. Drawings signed and dated 1868 survive in the Representative Church Body Library. Its limestone walls have sandstone dressings, pointed windows and a three-stage tower topped by a yellow-brick spire. The architectural inventory records renovation around 1989 and later restaurant use, showing how the church’s distinctive form survived a change of function. [4]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Burt. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Burt in A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) · Samuel Lewis
- Burt House, property 5047 · University of Galway, Landed Estates
- Former Christ Church, registration 40904704 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2024-05-09. How this page was prepared.