placenamesBallingarry
Baile an Gharraí
Lewis’s account of 1837 records the rural parish before the village’s present Church of Ireland building was erected.
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
- Baile an Gharraí · Irish · main form · validated name
- Ballingarry · English · main form
Place & story
A farming parish at a road crossing
Ballingarry lay on the roads linking Roscrea with Portumna and Nenagh with Parsonstown. In 1837 Samuel Lewis counted thirteen houses and eighty-five inhabitants in the hamlet, within a much larger parish population. He described land divided almost equally between cultivation and pasture, with green crops beginning to feature in an improving agricultural system. Limestone supplied building material, while substantial bogland remained part of the local landscape. [2]
The church before its replacement
Lewis’s church was the older building, described as having a spire and minarets. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners had recently provided £157 for repairs. His account also records a school established by the vicar in 1834 and supported by him with private subscriptions. These references document parish institutions before the surviving church of 1856: the repair grant belongs to its predecessor, rather than to the later building. [2]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Civil parish
- County
- Tipperary
- Barony
- Ormond Lower
- Coordinates
- 53.01374, -8.00924
- Mapped area
- 26.45 km²
- Logainm ID
- 2161 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Ballingarry. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Ballingarry, Lower Ormond: A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland1837 · Samuel Lewis
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.