placenamesMuckamore
Maigh Chomair
Road and housing development brought archaeological investigations that recovered part of Muckamore’s medieval monastic layout.
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
- Maigh Chomair · Irish · main form · validated name
- Muckamore · English · main form
Place & story
Recovering the cloister
Muckamore Abbey was an Augustinian priory, which the 1996 excavation account dates to after 1183. An earlier sixth-century monastery is suggested as a possibility. In 1973, excavation before road construction uncovered opposite corners of the cloister and adjoining structures, allowing archaeologists to estimate the buildings’ arrangement. [2]
Walls beneath later industry
A further investigation in September and October 1996 tested ground west of the road before housing development. Despite disturbance from twentieth-century factory buildings, archaeologists found a collapsed wall containing carved and moulded stones. A surviving stretch of its base fitted the monastic layout identified in 1973. Pottery, a ditch cut into bedrock and a later culvert and cobbled roadway also survived. [2]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Antrim
- Barony
- Massereene Lower
- Civil parish
- Grange of Muckamore
- Coordinates
- 54.69938, -6.18497 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 62779 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Muckamore. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- 1996:012 — Muckamore, Antrim · Eoin Halpin and Michael MacDonagh, Archaeological Development Services Ltd.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2021-05-26. How this page was prepared.