placenamesMilltown
Baile an Mhuilinn
Lock 3 at Ballynavally preserves evidence of the waterway’s engineering and the horses that once hauled its barges.
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
- Baile an Mhuilinn · Irish · main form · validated name
- Milltown · English · main form
Place & story
Engineering a passage past the rapids
Lock 3, off Milltown Road in Ballynavally, was built under Thomas Omer’s direction in the later 1750s. It occupies the end of a navigation cut that bypasses rapids in a bend of the River Lagan. The single masonry chamber measures 21.8 metres by 4.7 metres. Immediately downstream, a small arched stone bridge carried the horses towing barges from one side of the cut to the other. [2]
The official building survey of May 2011 records restoration of the chamber and the installation of replica timber gates. New sandstone replaced much earlier repair work, while reinforced concrete replaced the timber floor and an original stone sill. These interventions distinguish the restored working mechanism from the surviving eighteenth-century fabric. [2]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Down
- Barony
- Castlereagh Upper
- Civil parish
- Drumbo
- Within
- Ballynavally
- Coordinates
- 54.55176, -5.94419 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 130131 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Milltown. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Lock and Bridge, Milltown Road, Ballynavally, HB25/17/004 A · Department for Communities, Historic Buildings Database
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2019-10-08. How this page was prepared.