placenamesKilrea
Cill Ria
Lewis’s 1837 figures distinguish local provision from schools across the Mercers’ estate.
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 Ria · Irish · main form
- Kilrea · English · main form
Place & story
Buildings, books and school support
Samuel Lewis counted about 550 children in Kilrea’s five public schools in 1837. Subscriptions and the rector supported the parochial school. Another was maintained by the trustees of Erasmus Smith’s charity, with premises built by the Mercers’ Company in 1813 at a cost of £700; the company supported two further schools. Lewis separately described twenty-two schools across the wider Mercers’ estate, teaching roughly a thousand children without fees and supplying books. That estate extended into several parishes, so its larger total cannot be treated as Kilrea parish’s enrolment. [2]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Civil parish
- County
- Derry
- Barony
- Coleraine
- Barony
- Loughinsholin
- Coordinates
- 54.93489, -6.54890 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 2908 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Kilrea. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Kilrea, A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) · Samuel Lewis
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2009-11-02. How this page was prepared.