placenamesBorris
An Bhuiríos
The Laois parish of Borris appears under Maryborough in Lewis’s dictionary and in estate records now held at Limerick.
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
- An Bhuiríos · Irish · main form · non-validated name
- Borris · English · main form
Place & story
Two names for the parish
Lewis directs readers looking for Borris in Queen's County to Maryborough, and explicitly identifies the parish there as also called Borris. His 1837 account records an ecclesiastical union dating from 1721, joining Maryborough with Kilcolemanbane and Straboe. This locates Borris within the history of the county town now called Portlaoise, rather than the similarly named settlements elsewhere in Ireland. [2]
The former common
About two hundred acres adjoining the town had formerly been common land. According to Lewis, enclosure at the Union divided half between Lord Castlecoote and Sir John Parnell, with the remainder shared equally among thirteen freemen. A small reserved rent supported freemen's widows. The arrangement connected rights in surrounding land with the old borough's restricted civic membership. [2]
The Coote estate’s paper trail
The University of Limerick's Coote Papers catalogue identifies valuations made on 26 March 1895 for properties in Maryborough, explicitly within Borris parish. They cover streets including Pepper's Lane, Main Street, Tea Lane and Market Square. A separate valuation of Borris Little and Borris Great dates from July 1912. The catalogue records holdings, occupiers, lessors and valuations; the underlying documents have not been examined here. [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Civil parish
- County
- Laois
- Barony
- Maryborough East
- Coordinates
- 53.05044, -7.30679
- Mapped area
- 28.74 km²
- Logainm ID
- 1424 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Borris. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Maryborough, also called Borris: A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, 1837 · Samuel Lewis
- The Coote Papers, P10: valuations, printed pages 46–47 · University of Limerick, Special Collections and Archives
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.