placenamesRiverstown
Baile Uí Lachnáin
A five-arched border crossing, a Hackett family house and the move from a village school to Killeen.
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 Uí Lachnáin · Irish · main form · validated name
- Riverstown · English · main form
Place & story
The county-boundary bridge
Riverstown Bridge carries the road across the Little Brosna at the Tipperary–Offaly boundary. Built about 1780, it has five segmental arches in limestone. Pointed cutwaters on its southern side rise to the parapet at the central piers, creating pedestrian refuges. Later concrete reinforcement and rendering have altered parts of the structure, but the bridge retains the broad span and thick masonry piers characteristic of an eighteenth-century river crossing. [2]
Riverstown House
Riverstown House became particularly associated with the Hackett family, following earlier ownership by the Harrisons and Lord Dunalley. Kennedy’s local history cites Cooke’s 1826 description of Simpson Hackett’s residence as substantially rebuilt and accompanied by a garden. The house’s Georgian front is symmetrical, while kitchens and a rear addition date from 1901. Surviving garden walls record part of the setting of a residence closely linked with the village’s nineteenth-century history. [3]
From Riverstown school to Killeen
The village school was built in 1834 and occupied a single room. By the 1930s it had seventy-five pupils and two teachers, with heating provided by open fires. A replacement school was begun at Killeen in 1938 on land supplied by the Earl of Rosse. Principal Tom O’Donnell moved with the school in 1939. The change shifted local schooling away from the old village premises to a new site outside Riverstown. [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Tipperary
- Barony
- Ormond Lower
- Civil parish
- Loughkeen
- Coordinates
- 53.08436, -7.92388 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 67258 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Riverstown. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Riverstown Bridge, NIAH 22400518 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- Riverstown–Ballyloughnane, Birr Year Review 2016, p11 · Brian T. Kennedy, Birr Year Review
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2010-04-19. How this page was prepared.