placenamesHalfway House
Tigh Leath Slí
Halfway House near Ballycanvan preserves an old roadside inn, a finely built limestone bridge and a substantial ice-storage building.
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
- Tigh Leath Slí · Irish · main form · validated name
- Halfway House · English · main form
Place & story
The old inn at Ballycanvan
The building associated with Jack Meades is a compact two-storey house with thick, slightly sloping walls and a steep slate roof. A sign claims an inn was established here in 1705. The architectural inventory records a lease to Jenkin Richards in November 1711, when it was already called Halfway House. Later ownership passed through Thomas and John Meade. The building’s modest domestic form survives beside the larger bridge and later hospitality business. [2]
The limestone bridge
The single-arched bridge beside the inn was built in 1862–63. Its broad elliptical opening spans the road, with carefully dressed limestone around the arch and along the parapets. Sloping piers and a strongly defined stringcourse give the structure a substantial appearance despite its single span. The architectural record also notes an Ordnance Survey benchmark, a small detail linking the bridge with the measuring and mapping of the surrounding landscape. [3]
Storing ice before refrigeration
The ice house in the grounds is unusually large, with a circular chamber described by local researcher Andrew Doherty as about twenty feet across and more than thirty feet high. Its sun-facing wall incorporated a cavity for insulation, and the original entrance was high in the structure, near a thatched roof. Doherty records uncertainty about its construction date and original customers. The surviving building illustrates the infrastructure once needed to preserve perishable food. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Waterford
- Barony
- Gaultiere
- Civil parish
- Kill Saint Nicholas
- Coordinates
- 52.22890, -7.03395 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 133826 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Halfway House. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- John Meade, Ballycanvan Little, 22901805 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- Halfway House bridge, 22901815 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- Jack Meades Commercial Ice House, 5June2015 · Andrew Doherty, Tides & Tales
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.