placenamesCoolcullen
Cúl an Chuilinn
Coolcullen’s recorded past connects Protestant tenant families with Mothell parish church and a nineteenth-century parochial school.
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
- Cúl an Chuilinn · Irish · main form · validated name
- Coolcullen · English · main form
Place & story
A church built in two phases
Coolcullen's Church of Ireland church was built in 1792 with support from the Board of First Fruits. Renovation in 1814 added its western entrance tower, rising through three stages to a battlemented parapet. The rubble-stone church retains a simple rectangular body, with a small vestry to the northeast. Samuel Lewis's 1837 account separately records the original building grant and the later loan supporting improvements. [2] [4]
Tenant families and Protestant Road
Historian Desmond Norton identifies an unusually substantial Protestant tenant-farming population in nineteenth-century Coolcullen. Some families had arrived in the early eighteenth century, while others came from County Wexford around 1800. His study points to period houses, Mothell parish church and a road known as Protestant Road opposite the former rectory as physical traces of this community's presence in the townland. [3]
The parochial school in 1837
Lewis recorded about one hundred children attending the parochial school at Coolcullen in 1837. The rector supported it with an annual donation and had also provided an acre of land. This was a specific local institution within a wider parish educational network: Lewis separately listed five private schools and a Sunday school. His figures distinguish the Coolcullen school from the parish's total provision. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Kilkenny
- Barony
- Fassadinin
- Civil parish
- Mothell
- Within
- Coolcullen
- Coordinates
- 52.76877, -7.11095 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1412350 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Coolcullen. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Coolcullen Church,Mothell,record12401108 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- On Viscount Frankfort’s Kilkenny estates at Coolcullen and Keatingstown in the1840s,OldKilkennyReview2002,p21 · Desmond Norton,Kilkenny Archaeological Society
- Mothell,Kilkenny,A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland1837 · Samuel Lewis
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2024-10-24. How this page was prepared.