placenamesCrumlin
Cromghlinn
Crumlin’s old church, workplace housing and recorded village memories reveal changes from rural settlement to Dublin suburb.
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
- Cromghlinn · Irish · main form · validated name
- Crumlin · English · main form
Place & story
A medieval tower inside a later church
Saint Mary's old church combines nineteenth-century fabric with a much earlier tower. Archaeologist Antoine Giacometti's conservation assessment suggested an early fifteenth-century date for the tower through comparison with other medieval residential church towers. Monitoring in 2024 identified at least nine reused carved or dressed stones near its northern parapet. These had been inserted during reconstruction in the 1980s, showing how later repair can complicate the reading of medieval masonry. [2]
Housing tied to workplaces
Crumlin's expansion included housing built for employees of major Dublin businesses. Raleigh Square's1920s houses accommodated Imperial Tobacco Company workers who had come from Bristol to its Dolphin's Barn factory. Between 1926 and 1936 the Iveagh Trust developed Iveagh Gardens for Guinness brewery employees. The local walking guide places these schemes alongside the larger Corporation housing developments that transformed the surroundings of the older farming village. [3]
Gabriel Byrne remembers the cinema
A1988 RTÉ programme returned to Crumlin with actor Gabriel Byrne. It recalled the relationship between established villagers and people rehoused from the inner city during the 1930s and 1940s. The Star Cinema provided a shared meeting place for these communities. Preserved in RTÉ's archive, the broadcast offers a contemporary record of how residents remembered that social change, through the experience of streets and entertainment rather than housing plans alone. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Dublin
- Barony
- Uppercross
- Civil parish
- Crumlin
- Coordinates
- 53.31743, -6.31919 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 17465 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Crumlin. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- 2024:869 – St Mary’s Church, Crumlin · Antoine Giacometti, Archaeology Plan; Excavations.ie
- Crumlin Walking Trail Map and Guide 2022 · Crumlin History Group and Dublin City Council; acknowledging Finola Watchorn
- The Changing Face of Crumlin 1988 · RTÉ Archives;1988broadcast with Shay Healy and Gabriel Byrne
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2016-07-01. How this page was prepared.