placenamesKilvellane
Cill Mhealláin
Lewis records an agricultural use for limestone alongside building-stone quarries and earlier copper 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 Mhealláin · Irish · main form · validated name
- Kilvellane · English · main form
Place & story
Lime and land brought into cultivation
Samuel Lewis’s 1837 Kilvolane account describes the parish now recorded as Kilvellane. He linked the partial reclamation of formerly uncultivated land with the ready availability of lime. Several limestone quarries supplied stone burned for use on farmland. The account records agricultural change associated with a local mineral resource, without measuring how much land lime alone brought into cultivation. [2]
Building stone and earlier mining
Gritstone was also quarried extensively for buildings. Copper mines had operated but were discontinued by the time Lewis described the parish. He supplied neither their closure date nor their precise sites. The distinction separates active quarrying from mining that belonged to an earlier phase of local industry. [2]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Civil parish
- County
- Tipperary
- Barony
- Owney and Arra
- Coordinates
- 52.70389, -8.37899
- Mapped area
- 35.16 km²
- Logainm ID
- 2198 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Kilvellane. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Kilvolane: 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.