placenamesDromacummer
Drom an Chomair
Nineteenth-century surveys preserve a detailed picture of the two Dromacummer townlands in Bruree parish.
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
- Drom an Chomair · Irish · main form · validated name
- Dromacummer · English · main form
Place & story
Two adjoining townlands
The Ordnance Survey namebooks recorded Dromacummer East and West as adjoining parts of Bruree parish. The eastern townland contained about 220 acres of arable land and was identified as the property of Mr Hartopp of England. The western division, about 193 acres, belonged to Sir David Roche of Carass. These descriptions capture the local landscape through the surveyors’ concerns with ownership, boundaries and productive land. [2]
A mill and older enclosures
The same survey places Dromacummer Cottage in the northern part of the eastern townland and records a tuck mill there. It also notes two ancient forts, one to the south and another nearer the centre. The western townland contained a triangulation station called Howardstown. The entries bring together domestic, industrial and older archaeological features, although they do not provide dates for the mill or forts. [2]
Population across the Famine decade
The 1851 census report counted forty people in Dromacummer East, compared with sixty-four in 1841. Dromacummer West fell from seventeen to thirteen over the same period. The two townlands thus had fifty-three inhabitants between them in 1851, down from eighty-one a decade earlier. These figures describe the townlands rather than a separately enumerated village, and record a local decline during the decade of the Great Famine without identifying the fate of individual households. [3]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Dromacummer. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Ordnance Survey namebooks: Bruree parish, pp.268–269 · Ordnance Survey / Limerick Local Studies
- Census of Ireland 1851: County Limerick, p.242 · Census Commissioners / Central Statistics Office archive
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2017-12-01. How this page was prepared.