placenamesInch
Inis
Lewis’s 1837 account records a Down parish of tillage, rocky pasture and local schools.
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
- Inis · Irish · main form
- Inch · English · main form
Place & story
Farming and attempted extraction
Inch parish combined cultivated ground with woodland, plantations and substantial rocky pasture in Lewis’s 1837 account. He recorded a lead mine and nearby slate quarry at Ballanacreg, both worked only imperfectly. The parish landscape therefore included small extractive ventures alongside its agricultural economy. [2]
A schoolhouse and a separate rectory
The rector and J. W. Maxwell jointly paid for a parochial schoolhouse and chiefly supported its school, which taught about 100 children. Two private schools taught roughly another 150. Lewis also noted that Inch’s rectory had been separated from Ardkeen and Witter in 1834, documenting an ecclesiastical change close to the time of his survey. [2]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Civil parish
- County
- Down
- Barony
- Lecale Lower
- Coordinates
- 54.36834, -5.73789 (approximate)
- Mapped area
- 27.38 km²
- Logainm ID
- 65759 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Inch. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Inch, Down — 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.