placenamesLoughrea
Baile Locha Riach
Lewis’s county survey placed Loughrea among Galway’s centres of textile manufacture and trade.
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 Locha Riach · Irish · main form · non-validated name
- Loughrea · English · main form
Place & story
Making and selling everyday cloth
Samuel Lewis named Loughrea and Tuam as principal markets for the county’s earlier coarse linen trade. In his 1837 manufacturing survey, Loughrea also appears with Galway as a place where white frieze and caddow blankets were made and sold. Felt hats and straw bonnets added other forms of manufacture. These references concern Loughrea town within the wider barony; the county-wide production totals in the same survey do not measure output from the town alone. [2]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Loughrea. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Galway Manufactures: A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) · Samuel Lewis
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2026-09-19. How this page was prepared.