placenamesCashelmore
An Caiseal Mór
Cashelmore’s place in the Doe and Creeslough area is recorded through parish schooling, the old chapel and Father Mathew’s temperance campaign.
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
- An Caiseal Mór · Irish · main form · validated name
- Cashelmore · English · main form
Place & story
The school supported from Ards
Samuel Lewis’s 1837 account of Clondahorky parish records a school at Cashelmore supported by Mr Stewart of Ards. It formed part of a mixed network that also included the parochial school and privately funded teaching. The entry places local education within the relationship between surrounding communities and the Ards estate, before the later consolidation of school provision. Its pupil totals cover several schools together, rather than Cashelmore alone. [2]
Father Mathew at Medal Hill
Father Theobald Mathew’s temperance gathering at Cashelmore took place on 15 June 1841. The Irish Capuchin Archives preserve a later letter recalling the event at Medal Hill, near Doe Chapel, and the pledges taken there. The gathering remained part of local memory: friars from Ard Mhuire celebrated a commemorative Mass on the hill on 21 August 1988. The surviving booklet and correspondence document both Mathew’s visit and the community’s later remembrance of it. [3]
From Doe Chapel to Creeslough
The old church at Doe was rebuilt in 1830 under Father Peter Gallagher. A 2021 account of the parish’s church history describes its role in baptisms, marriages and funerals before it was replaced by the new Saint Michael’s at Creeslough in August 1971. The change moved worship to Liam McCormick’s modern building while leaving the older chapel site and surrounding burial ground as a record of earlier parish life. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Donegal
- Barony
- Kilmacrenan
- Civil parish
- Clondahorky
- Within
- Ards
- Within
- Cashelmore
- Coordinates
- 55.13518, -7.92160 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1412958 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Cashelmore. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Clondahorky parish: extract from Samuel Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) · Samuel Lewis / Donegal Genealogy Resources
- Mass Celebration on Medal Hill (Doe Chapel), IE CA DL/8/10 · Irish Capuchin Archives
- Landmark church is 50 years old this weekend, 13 August 2021 · Pat McCarry, Donegal Live
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.