placenamesClonmacnoise
Cluain Mhic Nóis
An early nineteenth-century parish account links irregular school attendance with seasonal agricultural work.
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
- Cluain Mhic Nóis · Irish · main form · validated name
- Clonmacnoise · English · main form
Place & story
Children needed on the land
The Clonmacnoise account published in William Shaw Mason’s 1816 parochial survey describes children attending local schools during quieter periods of the farming year. Parents said they could not spare them from work regularly. Attendance fell in spring and at harvest, while girls were commonly occupied in spinning. This is the survey’s account of contemporary conditions, rather than a description of the medieval monastery’s school. [2]
Lessons charged by the quarter
The parish clerk taught a licensed Protestant school with no more than fifteen pupils, and the account also recorded three Catholic schools. Quarterly tuition charges were one shilling and eightpence for reading and spelling, or three shillings and fourpence for writing and arithmetic. The survey did not identify these schools by individual site. [2]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Civil parish
- County
- Offaly
- Barony
- Garrycastle
- Coordinates
- 53.31164, -7.94878
- Mapped area
- 90.79 km²
- Logainm ID
- 2012 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Clonmacnoise. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- The parish of Clonmacnoise: Patrick Fitzgerald’s account in Shaw Mason’s parochial survey, 1816; reproduced by Offaly History in 2022 · Patrick Fitzgerald; reproduced and introduced by Offaly History
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.