placenamesStaffordstown
Baile Stafard
A recorded seventeenth-century battle site and nearby Cranfield Church connect Staffordstown’s landscape with fortification, worship and pilgrimage.
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
- Baile Stafard · Irish · main form · validated name
- Staffordstown · English · main form
Place & story
The bawn and the battle site
The Historic Environment Division’s 2017 list records a bawn and the site of a 1641 battle in Staffordstown townland. This archaeological record locates an older fortified presence within the landscape around the small settlement. It provides evidence for the site’s historical importance while leaving the detailed sequence of building and destruction to be established from fuller records. [2]
Nearby Cranfield Church
Cranfield’s ruined church and graveyard lie near Staffordstown on the Lough Neagh shore. The Department for Communities identifies it as the medieval parish church, possibly dating from the thirteenth century and probably abandoned in the seventeenth. A wooden cross inside the ruin reproduces an earlier timber termon cross which once stood north of the church, marking the boundary of its lands. [3]
The well of Saint Colman
A holy well east of Cranfield Church is traditionally associated with Saint Colman. The Department for Communities records it as a focus for pilgrimage, particularly during May and June. The church, boundary cross and well together preserve different elements of the area’s religious landscape: a place of worship, a marker of church lands and a shoreline destination for devotional visits. [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Antrim
- Barony
- Toome Upper
- Civil parish
- Duneane
- Coordinates
- 54.72019, -6.38583 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 63140 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Staffordstown. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Scheduled Historic Monuments in Northern Ireland, 2017: Staffordstown, ANT 049:070 · Historic Environment Division, Department for Communities
- Cranfield Church · Department for Communities
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2021-05-26. How this page was prepared.