placenamesValencia
Dairbhre
Lewis’s island-parish account records a local land measure and work connecting farms with the slate trade.
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
- Dairbhre · Irish · main form · non-validated name
- Valencia · English · main form
Place & story
Land measured in gneeves
Samuel Lewis recorded more than three hundred small holdings on Valencia in 1837. They ranged from half a gneeve to three gneeves, with a share of mountain and bog attached to each. He compared this local measure with ploughlands, but gave no fixed acreage for a gneeve. The figures therefore describe holdings in the units he recorded, without an assumed conversion into acres. [2]
Work in fields and at the shore
Lewis described women gathering seaweed and sand and spreading them on potato gardens, where these materials supplied the want of lime. Women also helped ship slate. His account places their labour within both agriculture and the island’s export industry, alongside quarry work that he said provided regular employment for 150 men. It does not give a separate total for women workers. [2]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Valencia. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Valencia or Kilmore — A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) · Samuel Lewis
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2021-10-29. How this page was prepared.