placenamesComber
An Comar
The wider parish supplied fuel, supported rural classrooms and linked institutional relief with assistance delivered to people’s homes.
The name
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
- An Comar · Irish · main form
- Comber · English · main form
Place & story
Land and fuel around the town
Comber parish stretched across Lower and Upper Castlereagh and included the former parish of Ballyricard. Lewis’s 1837 account describes a largely cultivated landscape with pasture and freestone quarries. Peat from Moneyreagh’s Royal Bog was sent to Belfast and elsewhere, while coal reached Comber in small lighters from Strangford Lough. His account distinguishes this existing traffic from a proposed pier at the river mouth: the larger harbour facilities he advocated were a suggestion, not a completed work. [2]
Classrooms across the parish
The Marchioness of Londonderry and the trustees of Erasmus Smith’s charity jointly funded Comber’s parochial school in 1813. The Marchioness maintained the building and added a schoolmaster’s house in 1832. Beyond town, Lewis named national schools at Ballymaglaff, Tullygiven and Ballystockart. He counted more than three hundred pupils in the national schools and another 740 in twelve private schools, illustrating how education extended through the surrounding countryside as well as the town. [2]
Relief inside and outside an institution
A house of industry established by the Marquess of Londonderry in 1824 accommodated twelve elderly poor people. Lewis also recorded a different part of its work: meal, potatoes and other provisions went to sixty families in their own homes. The Marquess contributed twenty-five pounds annually towards its support. This arrangement combined a small residential institution with assistance dispersed through the local community, rather than limiting relief to people who entered the house. [2]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Civil parish
- County
- Down
- Barony
- Castlereagh Lower
- Barony
- Castlereagh Upper
- Coordinates
- 54.51305, -5.78782 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 65696 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Comber. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Comber, A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland 1837 · Samuel Lewis
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2019-10-08. How this page was prepared.