placenamesFahan Upper
Fathain Uachtarach
Lewis distinguished active quarrying from slate outcrops that had seen little working.
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
- Fathain Uachtarach · Irish · main form
- Fahan Upper · English · main form
Place & story
Different uses of local stone
Near Fahan Point, Samuel Lewis recorded slate rocks close to Lough Swilly’s shore in 1837, while noting that they had not been worked extensively. Elsewhere in his account of Upper Fahan he described abundant millstone grit being quarried to make and repair roads, as well as freestone. These were different resources with different recorded uses: the presence of shoreline slate did not mean that it supported an established large quarrying industry. [2]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Civil parish
- County
- Donegal
- Barony
- Inishowen West
- Coordinates
- 55.08592, -7.40496
- Mapped area
- 41.3 km²
- Logainm ID
- 787 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Fahan Upper. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Fahan, Upper — A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) · Samuel Lewis
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2026-06-30. How this page was prepared.