placenamesKilleshin
Cill Uisean
Lewis’s 1837 account links a substantial road cutting with the parish’s coal workings.
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
- Cill Uisean · Irish · main form · non-validated name
- Killeshin · English · main form
Place & story
The Cut of Killeshin
The road from Carlow to the collieries passed through the Cut of Killeshin, which Samuel Lewis described as extending through a high hill for more than half a mile. He gave its width as twenty-one feet and its depth as varying from ten to forty feet. The cutting was a conspicuous feature of the route serving the coalfield in 1837. [2]
Coal workings and discontinued furnaces
Lewis identified H. Fitzmaurice as the operator of extensive collieries in the parish. He separately recorded former smelting furnaces which had stopped for want of fuel. His account distinguishes active coal extraction from earlier smelting, without identifying the furnaces’ fuel or giving their closure date. [2]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Civil parish
- County
- Laois
- Barony
- Slievemargy
- Coordinates
- 52.84907, -6.99278
- Mapped area
- 43.21 km²
- Logainm ID
- 1443 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Killeshin. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Killeshin: A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) · Samuel Lewis
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.