placenamesKilladeas
Cill Chéile Dé
Killadeas connects an old churchyard with the reuse of a wartime flying-boat base and the beginnings of the RNLI's inland lifeboat service.
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 Chéile Dé · Irish · main form · validated name
- Killadeas · English · main form
Place & story
A search beside the Bishop’s Stone
Killadeas graveyard contains the carved pillar known as the Bishop's Stone. A small museum investigation on 21 August 1987 sought another monument nearby: a cross-slab remembered as lying in the grass during the early 1970s. Helen Lanigan Wood of Fermanagh County Museum reported that removing topsoil failed to locate it. Her brief excavation account records an unsuccessful search, preserving a distinction between the known pillar and the missing slab. [2]
From flying boats to sailing boats
At Gublusk Bay, Lough Erne Yacht Club occupies a Royal Air Force site built in 1941 for Catalina flying boats. The club's own history describes the later reuse of its slipway, offshore moorings and hangar for recreational boating. The concrete shoreline also survives from the wartime base. Clubhouse building in the 1960s and 1980s, followed by a marina in 1992, added new facilities around that inherited infrastructure. [3]
The RNLI moves inland
In May 2001 the RNLI opened its first inland lifeboat station on Lower Lough Erne, based at Killadeas beside the yacht club. It was the charity's 225 th station. A second base followed at Carrybridge on Upper Lough Erne in 2002, working with the original service. The paired stations responded to the scale and complexity of the lakes, extending organised rescue beyond the tidal waters usually associated with lifeboats. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Fermanagh
- Barony
- Lurg
- Civil parish
- Trory and Islands
- Within
- Rockfield
- Coordinates
- 54.44301, -7.67628 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 130638 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Killadeas. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- 1987:18, Killadeas Graveyard, Rockfield · Helen Lanigan Wood, Fermanagh County Museum; Excavations.ie
- Our Story: Lough Erne Yacht Club · Lough Erne Yacht Club
- 2001: First inland lifeboat station · Royal National Lifeboat Institution
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2016-11-30. How this page was prepared.