placenamesGaradice
Garairis
Garadice in County Meath combines surviving castle masonry with archaeological evidence of medieval work and settlement.
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
- Garairis · Irish · main form · validated name
- Garadice · English · main form
Place & story
The remains of Garadice Castle
Garadice Castle survives in fragments, including part of a circular northern tower and the adjoining wall. Openings and traces of stairs indicate a building of several floors. Local historian Noel French connects it with the Civil Survey's record of a castle on lands held by Vallerian Weisly in 1640. The documentary reference establishes the castle's presence by that date, rather than a precise year of construction. [2]
Settlement uncovered beside the road
Excavations during the R158 realignment in 2007 uncovered a late-medieval settlement south-west of the castle. Archaeologist Ellinor Larsson recorded pits, ditches, water-pits and traces of a possible building. Abundant iron slag indicated metalworking, while pottery included local wares dated to the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. Some activity continued into the early post-medieval period, extending the documented history beyond the surviving castle walls. [3]
An early school whose site is uncertain
Coole National School's history records an earlier school in Garadice before Gallow's school operated in the churchyard. It preserves a possible association with a building known as The Hall, but expressly says the location is uncertain. Gallow's school came under the National Education Board in December 1854, and Coole's present school replaced it in 1956. This institutional account links Garadice with a longer sequence of education in the surrounding parish. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Meath
- Barony
- Deece Upper
- Civil parish
- Gallow
- Coordinates
- 53.45704, -6.70517 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1414654 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Garadice. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Coolearea,Summerhill:Garadice · Noel French,Meath History Hub
- 2007:1314,GaradiceSite11,07E0295 · Ellinor Larsson,CRDS
- HistoryoftheSchool · Coole National School
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.