placenamesBallagh
A nineteenth-century chapel record and modern historical interpretation connect Ballagh’s ruins with the community that once lived here.
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
- Ballagh · English · main form
Place & story
A chapel before the Famine
Samuel Lewis’s 1837 description of Kilcumreagh parish explicitly records a Catholic chapel at Ballagh. It provides contemporary evidence of the village’s religious life before the Great Famine. A historical-society tour notice published in 2025 identified surviving walls of an eighteenth-century church, a school and a public house, alongside ruined houses. These remains preserve several functions of the former settlement, although the notice does not establish when each building ceased to be used. [2] [3]
Interpreting the deserted settlement
Westmeath Archaeological and Historical Society advertised a field trip to Ballagh Famine Village for 23 August 2025, led by Fr Jimmy Murray and Seamus O’Brien. The accompanying announcement planned a performance of Róisín Gaffney’s song The Hungry Cry. The proposed programme combined historical explanation and music at the deserted settlement, showing how local organisations present its Famine associations to later generations. [4] [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Townland
- County
- Westmeath
- Barony
- Clonlonan
- Civil parish
- Kilcumreragh
- Within
- Ballybroder
- Coordinates
- 53.42197, -7.65905
- Mapped area
- 0.34 km²
- Logainm ID
- 1390464 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Ballagh. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Kilcumreagh: A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, 1837 · Samuel Lewis
- Tour of local Famine Village for Heritage Week, 18 August 2025 · Westmeath Independent, announcement for Westmeath Archaeological and Historical Society
- Outing 2025 to Ballagh Famine Village, 23 August 2025 · Westmeath Archaeological and Historical Society
- Boundary geometry retains its source attribution and licence in the downloadable geographic record. Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2008-08-18. How this page was prepared.