placenamesDrumline
Drom Laoinn
Nineteenth-century accounts describe fertile riverside land, a fragmentary church and two castles whose older records preserve different associations.
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
- Drom Laoinn · Irish · main form
- Drumline · English · main form
Place & story
Farming beside the Shannon
Drumline lay beside the Shannon and the Limerick–Ennis mail-coach road. Lewis’s 1837 account included fertile riverside corcass land and a substantial area of the bishop’s mensal property. Most land was cultivated, with pasture making up another part of the parish economy. In Catholic administration Drumline belonged to the Newmarket district, whose local chapel stood near Ballycunneen; its Church of Ireland vicarage formed part of the Kilnasoolagh union. [2]
The church as it stood in 1839
The Ordnance Survey letter of 1839 found Drumline’s old church severely ruined. It measured seventy-two feet by twenty-one. The west gable had disappeared, the eastern window was lost, and a long section of the north wall survived without openings. The surveyors’ measurements give a dated record of the building’s condition, rather than a description that can automatically be applied to the remains today. [3]
Two castles in the old lists
The surveyors recorded a castle east of the church, associating it with the older list entry for Dromleyne and Moriertagh O’Brien. For Smithstown Castle they found differing associations: William O’Lionain’s list named Shane, son of Sheedy Macnamara, as its builder, while another list assigned it to Shane O’Mulchonry. These reports preserve the evidence available to the surveyors without resolving every question of ownership or construction. [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Civil parish
- County
- Clare
- Barony
- Bunratty Lower
- Coordinates
- 52.71975, -8.86830 (approximate)
- Mapped area
- 14.16 km²
- Logainm ID
- 420 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Drumline. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Dromline in A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) · Samuel Lewis
- Parish of Drumline: Ordnance Survey Letters 1839 · John O’Donovan and Eugene O’Curry; Clare Libraries transcription
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2021-11-01. How this page was prepared.