placenamesKilcotty
Cill Chota
Kilcotty’s name has an attested saintly association, while family correspondence and county records preserve traces of its church and road network.
The name
These Irish name elements are associated with this record in the Logainm glossary.
An element’s translation is a clue, rather than a complete explanation of the name. Its form and meaning depend on local history and the full Irish name.
Recorded forms
- Cill Chota · Irish · main form · validated name
- Kilcotty · English · main form
Place & story
The saint in the name
Placename specialists Conchubhar Ó Crualaoich and Aindí Mac Giolla Chomhghaill identify the Wexford name Kilcotty with Coda, a saint whose feast appears on 26 December in the native Irish calendars. Their account gives the form Cill Coda and explains it as Coda’s church. This is a documented interpretation of the complete place-name, linking the locality with the calendar of Irish saints rather than identifying it from the word for church alone. [2]
Remembering Ballyhuskard Church
A letter written by John Edward Quinsey in December 1992 distinguishes Ballyhuskard parish from the local name Kilcotty. He recalled the Church of Ireland building as standing in Kilcotty, with its burial ground known as Kilcotty cemetery. His family had worshipped there before its demolition, which he placed around 1962. The letter preserves a personal account of the lost church and of the distinction between the parish name and the cemetery’s local identity. [3]
Maintaining the road
The church also served as a reference point in public road records. Wexford’s grand-jury presentments for 1891 list a five-year maintenance contract held by James Donohoe for two hundred perches of road between Kilcotty church and the cross of Myle. The entry records a half-year payment under a contract begun at the summer assizes of 1889. Such precise descriptions made a small rural church a fixed landmark in the county’s system of road maintenance. [4]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Kilcotty. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Ros Comáin/Roscommon: native saints’ calendars,18December2023 · Conchubhar Ó Crualaoich and Aindí Mac Giolla Chomhghaill, Placenames Database of Ireland
- Letter from John Edward Quinsey concerning the Quinseys of Clonmore,14December1992 · John Edward Quinsey, reproduced in Conflicting Legacies
- Grand Jury Presentments1891, Ballaghkeen South, page46 · Wexford County Archives
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.