placenamesDunnamore
Domhnach Mór
Dunnamore, also written Dunamore, belongs to Kildress parish; its church history and a veteran’s testimony document changes in local institutions.
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
- Domhnach Mór · Irish · main form · validated name
- Dunnamore · English · main form
Place & story
Building St Mary’s
St Mary’s Chapel at Dunamore replaced an earlier, smaller building below the present graveyard. Kildress parish’s history records Father Bernard Murphy’s wish for a larger church, expressed to parishioners in 1863. By the time the new building was dedicated on 17 March 1872, Father John McCartan was serving as curate. Archbishop Daniel McGettigan performed the dedication. The account places the church within a wider programme of chapel building in the parish. [2]
Renovation and rededication
The parish records work on St Mary’s in the late 1970s, during the ministry of Father John Mackle and Father Sean Hegarty. A later programme began under Father Owen O’Donnell and was completed under Father Paddy Hughes. Following these renovations and refurbishment, Cardinal Sean Brady rededicated the church on 10 February 2013. These successive campaigns document continuing investment in the nineteenth-century building rather than its replacement by a new chapel. [2]
A republican circle remembered
Bureau of Military History witness statement 911 recalls an Irish Republican Brotherhood circle at Dunamore in 1916. Its author, raised in nearby Killucan, names John Small as the circle’s leader and Charles Conway as the man who enrolled him. He estimated its membership at thirty to forty men and described a transfer of activity from older members to younger organisers around 1917. This is a participant’s retrospective account of local political organisation. [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Tyrone
- Barony
- Dungannon Upper
- Civil parish
- Kildress
- Coordinates
- 54.67334, -7.05435 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1414202 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Dunnamore. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- History: St Mary’s Chapel, Dunamore · Kildress Parish, drawing on Kildress: Rolling Back the Brambles
- Bureau of Military History witness statement 911, opening page: Dunamore circle · Bureau of Military History / Military Archives
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2012-01-25. How this page was prepared.