placenamesColmanstown
Baile Uí Chlúmháin
Colmanstown’s agricultural landscape includes a Quaker model farm, an estate lime kiln and memories of wartime turf work.
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
- Baile Uí Chlúmháin · Irish · main form · validated name
- Colmanstown · English · main form
- Colemanstown · English · main form · local name
Place & story
The Quaker model farm
The Society of Friends’ Central Relief Committee established a model farm at Colmanstown in 1849. Intended to teach improved farming, it required extensive drainage and reclamation before crops could be grown. A diverted stream powered a mill for threshing and processing grain. Historian Rob Goodbody records 228people employed, with grain, green crops, cattle, sheep and pigs among the enterprises. The project continued beyond the Famine until the property was sold in the early 1860s. [2]
The estate lime kiln
A surviving lime kiln, dated by the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage to around 1800, preserves another part of Colmanstown’s agricultural industry. Built into a hillside, its square limestone structure has dressed corner stones and an arched opening above the fire box. Galway community archaeologist Christy Cunniffe explains that lime from such estate kilns served several purposes, including fertilising land, limewashing walls and binding building materials. [3] [4]
Work on the bogs
Mary Farrell’s memoir recalls turf work opening at Colemanstown and Attymon in 1941. Local men earned money under a ganger named Dignan, while families also cut and sold turf themselves. Farrell remembered spending summers helping save the turf and being rewarded with a trip to Tuam Races. Her recollections place the district’s bogs within the working life of nearby households during the wartime years. [5]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Galway
- Barony
- Tiaquin
- Civil parish
- Clonkeen
- Within
- Colmanstown
- Coordinates
- 53.39073, -8.58627 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1413570 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Colmanstown. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Quakers & the Famine,History Ireland6.1(Spring1998) · Rob Goodbody, Historical Committee of the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland
- Colmanstown lime kiln,NIAH30407203 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- Colmanstown lime kiln,14April2016 · Christy Cunniffe, Galway Community Archaeology
- Mary Farrell: My Memoirs,December2019 · Mary Farrell, Skehana & District Heritage
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2012-01-11. How this page was prepared.