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
Port Omna· Irish · main form · validated name
Portumna· English · main form
Place & story
People & connections
The Clanricardes' house by the lake
The fourth Earl of Clanricarde built Portumna Castle in the early seventeenth century as the de Burgo family's residence. Its design combined defensive features with the form of a Renaissance country house. Fire in 1826 left it roofless. State conservation began in the 1960s and gradually returned a roof and other missing elements to the building. The formal approach and walled kitchen garden preserve the relationship between the house, its cultivated grounds and Lough Derg.[2]
A new poor-law institution
Portumna Poor Law Union was declared in February 1850, and its workhouse opened in 1852. Architect George Wilkinson designed accommodation for six hundred people. Seven substantial buildings stand around four yards on a site of more than eight acres. The institution brought the elderly, sick, unemployed and destitute into a highly regulated setting administered by a board of guardians. Its opening after the worst Famine years is a reminder that severe poverty and institutional relief continued beyond that crisis.[3]
Workhouse routines and later uses
The workhouse centre's chronology records disputes over imported Australian meat in the 1870s, the arrival of Mercy sisters in 1884 and a smallpox outbreak in 1894. Even the proposal for hot water in the infirmary came as late as 1916. When the workhouse closed in 1921, infirmary residents were transferred to Loughrea. Later uses included a room let for a knitting factory and an agricultural show on the grounds. The surviving buildings retain this long sequence of institutional and community use.[3]
Both counts use the 2016 settlement boundary, allowing like-for-like comparison. CSO supplies the 2022 count on this older boundary for comparison only. The official 2022 Built Up Area has different boundaries.
View population figures
Portumna — Census 2016 settlement footprint — census population
These are the historical areas published in the 2006 census report. Boundaries may differ between censuses and from modern settlements. Legal towns, environs and suburbs are shown separately; none has been combined into a modern settlement total.
View population figures
Portumna, Galway — Census town, CSO 2006 report — census population
These are the historical areas published in the 1996 census report. Boundaries may differ between censuses and from modern settlements. Legal towns, environs and suburbs are shown separately; none has been combined into a modern settlement total.
View population figures
Portumna, Galway — Census town, CSO 1996 report — census population
Figures cover the historical town area printed in the 1986 report. Boundaries may have changed between censuses. Legal town, environs and suburb totals remain separate and differ from modern settlement boundaries.
View population figures
Portumna, Galway — Census town, CSO 1986 report — census population
These figures use different area definitions. Read the boundary note before comparing them.
Portumna, Galway
Published census settlement populations
1,450people · 2016
Settlement boundaries changed during this period. Differences may reflect boundary changes as well as population change. Where a 2011 legal-town-and-environs count is shown, it has not been recalculated onto the 2016 settlement boundary.
placenames