placenamesMilltown
Baile an Mhuilinn
The former milling hamlet in Ballymurphy became part of Belfast, while its name endured in streets and the cemetery.
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
A settlement on the stream
Milltown grew beside the Ballymurphy Stream in the civil parish of Shankill. The Gazetteer of British Place Names records milling here from at least the eighteenth century, before the hamlet became absorbed into south-west Belfast. Much of the older housing and the mill buildings disappeared after the Second World War. Milltown Row and Mill Court, as well as the cemetery, preserve the locality’s name within the later urban landscape. [2]
Milltown House and St Patrick’s
St Patrick’s Industrial School moved from Donegall Street to Milltown House on the Falls Road in January 1873. Its new premises initially accommodated 65 boys and included a five-acre farm. Workshops and dormitories were subsequently enlarged, and an adjoining water-powered mill was purchased in 1879 for industrial instruction. The institution occupied this site until its move to new premises on Glen Road in 1957. Its history forms a separate strand of Milltown’s development beside the former mills. [3] [2]
The cemetery and its records
Bishop Patrick Dorrian opened Milltown Cemetery in 1869. The extensive burial ground became an enduring landmark of Catholic Belfast, with family graves, historic monuments and war graves. In March 2024 the Diocese of Down and Connor announced that handwritten burial registers had been transcribed into a digital database. The project covered more than 200,000 burial records and over 36,000 graves. It accompanied work to conserve memorials and identify war graves with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Antrim
- Barony
- Belfast Upper
- Civil parish
- Shankill
- Within
- Ballymurphy
- Coordinates
- 54.65342, -6.11728 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 135822 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Milltown. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Milltown, Antrim · Gazetteer of British Place Names, Association of British Counties
- St Patrick’s School for Roman Catholic Boys, Belfast · Peter Higginbotham
- Milltown Cemetery announces the Digitalisation of Burial Records, 11 March 2024 · Diocese of Down and Connor
- Milltown Cemetery entrance, Belfast, County Antrim illustration: based on a The entrance to Milltown Cemetery (12 December 2008) by Bill Boaden. AI-assisted watercolour and ink adaptation; cream paper margins added, incidental clutter omitted and fine details simplified. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2021-05-26. How this page was prepared.