placenamesCreegh
An Chríoch
Creegh’s stone bridge and Saint Mary’s Church preserve evidence of nineteenth-century building and a later connection with the coast at Quilty.
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 Chríoch · Irish · main form · validated name
- Creegh · English · main form
- Cree · English · main form · local name
Place & story
The bridge over the river
Creegh Bridge dates to around 1820. The county’s 2008 industrial heritage survey records three arches built in rubble limestone with lime mortar, and triangular cutwaters dividing the flow. Repairs had altered the undersides of the arches and parts of the cutwaters by the time of that inspection. The survey also noted that the bridge had become part of a village amenity area, giving this working crossing a second role as a public setting. [2]
Saint Mary’s rebuilt
Saint Mary’s Catholic Church is recorded by the national architectural inventory as an 1861 building, with a projecting central front and side transepts. This cruciform arrangement creates a broad interior around the sanctuary. The diocese traces a church here to 1828, so the later date represents a further phase in the history of Catholic worship at Cree rather than the community’s first chapel. [3] [4]
Timber from the Leon XIII
The diocese records that pitch-pine recovered from the Leon XIII, wrecked at Quilty in 1907, was subsequently used at Cree. The salvaged wood helped repair the chapel roof and provided flooring for its sanctuary. The reused material gives the inland church a specific connection with an event on the neighbouring coast, carried into the fabric of the building itself. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Clare
- Barony
- Moyarta
- Civil parish
- Kilmacduane
- Coordinates
- 52.74543, -9.43655 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1165912 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Creegh. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Industrial Heritage Review of County Clare2008: Creegh Bridge, IS012, p.40 · Clare County Council, survey by G. O’Connor
- Saint Mary’s Catholic Church, Creegh: NIAH20404704 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- Saint Mary’s, Cree: church history · Diocese of Killaloe
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.