placenamesFinglas
Fionnghlas
A medieval churchyard, memories of a Mayday fair and the legacy of Séamus Ennis connect Finglas’s village past with the modern suburb.
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
- Fionnghlas · Irish · main form · validated name
- Finglas · English · main form
Place & story
Saint Canice’s churchyard
The ruined Saint Canice’s church stands within a graveyard whose monuments range from seventeenth-century memorials to later family plots. Its walls show successive phases of building and repair. The 2022 conservation plan records 363 visible monuments, including vaults, chest tombs, table tombs, crosses and headstones. Together they preserve a substantial collection of funerary craftsmanship around the older church. [2]
The Nethercross and its uncertain story
The stone Nethercross in the churchyard has accumulated stories of concealment and recovery. Local tradition connects its toppling or deliberate burial with Cromwell’s army in 1649, and its re-erection with the Reverend Robert Walsh in 1816. The evidence is less straightforward: antiquarian Austin Cooper recorded seeing a broken cross in the graveyard in September 1779. The conservation plan therefore presents these accounts as traditions alongside the surviving documentary observation. [2]
Mayday in the village
A Mayday festival developed in Finglas towards the end of the eighteenth century. Its maypole stood at the village pound, once a place for stocks. Celebrations included dancing, sack races and other competitions, and the annual fair continued until 1840. The original pole has disappeared; the Dick McKee memorial, unveiled in 1951, occupies its former location. A local committee revived the Maypole festival in 2019, renewing an old gathering tradition in a changed village. [3]
Séamus Ennis remembered
The musician, singer, folklore collector and broadcaster Séamus Ennis spent his boyhood in Finglas. His home on Jamestown Road was demolished in the 1960s, but the site has been marked by commemorative plaques. The first was unveiled during the inaugural Séamus Ennis Festival in November 1994, when a local road was also renamed in his honour. A further council plaque was unveiled in May 2019, just before the centenary of his birth. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Dublin
- Barony
- Castleknock
- Civil parish
- Finglas
- Coordinates
- 53.38907, -6.30134 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1371589 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Finglas. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Saint Canice, Finglas: Conservation and Management Plan, 2022, page 6 · Dublin City Council
- Finglas Strategy Baseline Analysis Report: historical development, page 110 · Dublin City Council
- DCC commemorative plaques: Seamus Ennis, 4 December 2020 · Dublin City Council
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2026-09-23. How this page was prepared.