placenamesRathdrum
Ráth Droma
Clothing-club records connect household budgets with the town’s drapers and boot sellers.
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
- Ráth Droma · Irish · main form
- Rathdrum · English · main form
Place & story
Weekly savings and monthly supplies
The Tate charity’s clothing club gave Rathdrum parishioners a structured way to obtain household necessities. Its 1877 rules, described in Wicklow County Archives’ catalogue, allowed labourers and cottagers to subscribe between two and four pence weekly, paid weekly or monthly. At each month’s end, members received value in blankets, cloth or boots. This scheme extended the charity’s work beyond its better-known interest-free loans. The account comes from the archivist’s description of the surviving rules, rather than a new examination of the original paper. [2]
The shops behind the accounts
The same catalogue identifies receipts from Rathdrum traders including George Leeson, John Sutton and Son, and Charles Wilson of Market Square. Subscribers’ records show 97 members in 1880, 129 in 1895 and 42 in 1923. These changing totals and merchants’ bills preserve evidence of everyday purchasing as well as charitable administration; they do not by themselves explain why membership rose or declined. [2]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Rathdrum. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- John Tate’s Charity Collection, WWCA/PP4, clothing club and receipts, pages34–38 · Louise Maher, Wicklow County Archives, June2024
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2011-05-26. How this page was prepared.