placenamesDysart
An Díseart
A late-Georgian house overlooks Lough Ennell beside a landscape associated by tradition with Jonathan Swift.
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
- An Díseart · Irish · main form · non-validated name
- Dysart · English · main form
Place & story
The house above the lake
Lilliput House stands in Nure or Lilliput, on Lough Ennell’s western shore. The architectural inventory dates it to about 1820. Stone steps rise above the basement to a rounded entrance with a fanlight, while sash windows survive in the limestone walls. Later extensions and changes of use altered the building. Samuel Lewis placed Lilliput within Dysart parish in 1837, when it belonged to Andrew Savage Nugent and was uninhabited. [2] [3]
A name associated with Swift
Sport Ireland’s account of the Westmeath Way records the tradition that Jonathan Swift stayed with friends beside Lough Ennell and used Lilliput as the name of his fictional island in Gulliver’s Travels. This establishes the association in the landscape’s public interpretation, rather than proving how he devised the name. It also leaves the surviving house distinct from the story: the inventory dates that building to the nineteenth century, long after Swift’s lifetime. [4] [2]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Civil parish
- County
- Westmeath
- Barony
- Moycashel
- Barony
- Rathconrath
- Coordinates
- 53.50014, -7.45225
- Mapped area
- 30.03 km²
- Logainm ID
- 2460 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Dysart. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Lilliput House, record15403206 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- Dysart, Westmeath, A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, 1837 · Samuel Lewis
- Westmeath Way: route description · Sport Ireland
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2021-10-29. How this page was prepared.