placenamesMullingar
An Muileann gCearr
Local schools trace how gifts of land and successive building projects expanded educational provision.
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 Muileann gCearr · Irish · main form
- Mullingar · English · main form
Place & story
A brewer’s educational endowment
James Hevey, a Mullingar brewer and landowner, left land at Bryanstown, Ballinea, to fund education for poor children of the parish. After his death in 1837, a trust carried forward the project. The Hevey Institute opened on 20 October 1856, combining a classical school preparing boys in Latin and Greek for Maynooth with a general school managed by the Christian Brothers. [2]
Changing classrooms and restored buildings
The institute’s original building was designed by Dublin architect John Bourke. A new primary school opened on the grounds in 1959, followed by a secondary building in 1972 and a gym in 1980. Refurbishment of the older institute began in 2008 and finished in 2012, restoring its oratory windows and linking the nineteenth-century building to the later school through a glazed corridor. [2]
The Presentation school’s development
The Presentation Sisters arrived in Mullingar in 1825 and took over teaching in February 1826. Their school history records a permanent building erected beside the convent between 1840 and 1842. Reconstruction during the 1930s altered the school’s original three-storey form. A separate senior school opened in 1957, with older pupils moving there while younger classes remained in the junior school. [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Civil parish
- County
- Westmeath
- Barony
- Fartullagh
- Coordinates
- 53.52042, -7.37908
- Mapped area
- 90.79 km²
- Logainm ID
- 2484 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Mullingar. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- History of Coláiste Mhuire, the Hevey Institute · Coláiste Mhuire, Mullingar
- Our School History · Presentation Junior School, Mullingar
- The Hevey Institute, Mullingar, County Westmeath, as photographed in June 2023 illustration: based on a Mullingar - Hevey Institute by Colin Park. AI-assisted watercolour and ink adaptation; cream paper margins added, incidental clutter omitted and fine details simplified. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2021-10-29. How this page was prepared.