placenamesRosemount
Baile an Bhric Óig
Rosemount’s football club grew from local initiative into a repeated county champion, with its grounds becoming a community meeting place. The village church and nearby Knockastia’s limestone add older layers to the landscape.
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 Bhric Óig · Irish · main form · validated name
- Rosemount · English · main form
Place & story
A schoolteacher and a football club
Rosemount GAA traces an important influence on its formation to Ben Hickey, a Kerry teacher who arrived at the national school in 1916. The club affiliated to Westmeath County Board in 1924 after founder Johnny Smyth cycled to a meeting in Mullingar to submit the application. Its first junior championship followed in 1928, and its first senior title in 1932 after a second replay. Further successes included three consecutive senior championships in 1939–41 and again in 1951–53. [2]
Fr O’Growney Park
The club obtained about six acres from the Irish Land Commission in 1935. Volunteers developed the grounds, officially opened in 1943 and named Fr O’Growney Park after the Irish-language scholar. A community centre built on the site in 1979 also provided dressing rooms. Later improvements included a second pitch and floodlighting. The grounds consequently became more than a playing field, bringing football and shared community facilities together in one place. [2]
Saint Thomas the Apostle’s church
In a 2025 account of the church’s anniversary, parish priest Fr Jimmy Murray recalled that land was purchased from Richard Nagle in 1843 and the first Mass was celebrated on Christmas Day 1845. The stone building initially lacked a finished floor and ceiling. Improvements arrived gradually: a ceiling in 1883, a marble high altar in 1899 and a wooden floor in 1916. Fundraising in the 1930s supported heating and stained glass, showing how successive generations completed and adapted the church. [3]
Knockastia’s exposed limestone
Nearby Knockastia Hill and its disused quarry reveal the limestone underlying much of the Midlands. Geological Survey Ireland identifies massive Waulsortian limestone in the quarry face and weathered outcrops on the summit. Hollows beneath overhangs show where groundwater dissolved the rock, while orange deposits mark seepage on the southern quarry wall. The survey regards the exposures as valuable geological evidence, but notes that the quarry is unsuitable for general promotion and that the hill is private farmland requiring the owner’s permission. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Westmeath
- Barony
- Moycashel
- Civil parish
- Kilcumreragh
- Within
- Ballybrickoge
- Coordinates
- 53.42761, -7.65396 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 137367 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Rosemount. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Rosemount GAA: birth of the club, championships and Fr O’Growney Park · Rosemount GAA
- Rosemount to celebrate anniversary of local church, 3 October 2025 · Westmeath Independent; account by Fr Jimmy Murray
- Knockastia Hill and Quarry: Westmeath county geological site report WH013 · Robert Meehan, Ronan Hennessy, Matthew Parkes and Siobhán Power, Geological Survey Ireland, 2019
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.