placenamesThe Pigeons
Na Colúir
The Pigeons preserves the memory of an older inn associated with Oliver Goldsmith’s literary landscape.
The name
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
- Na Colúir · Irish · main form · validated name
- The Pigeons · English · main form
Place & story
An older inn and a later namesake
The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage distinguishes two public houses called the Three Jolly Pigeons. The original stood in Cloghannagarragh, south of the later building bearing the name. It was associated with the inn setting in Oliver Goldsmith’s 1773 comedy She Stoops to Conquer. The surviving namesake therefore continues a local literary association without being the original inn. [2]
The surviving public house
The later Three Jolly Pigeons combines a two-storey house with a low thatched section. Its entrance porches include a fanlight and a millstone laid as paving outside the northern doorway. The inventory notes uncertainty about the thatched portion: it might be older fabric or a later addition made for picturesque effect. Its appearance alone cannot settle the building’s sequence. [2]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Westmeath
- Barony
- Kilkenny West
- Civil parish
- Noughaval
- Within
- Cloghannagarragh
- Coordinates
- 53.50887, -7.83418 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 137369 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — The Pigeons. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Three Jolly Pigeons, record 15401602 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.