placenamesDunmore
Dún Mór
Records from Lack and Dunmore connect milling, landholding and commercial buildings within the Galway barony.
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
- Dún Mór · Irish · main form · non-validated name
- Dunmore · English · main form
Place & story
Water power at Lack
Lack Mill near Milltown records the industrial work once supported by the Clare River. The local heritage group identifies it as a corn and tuck mill, with an 1850s Mill Book entry recording one pair of millstones and a fourteen-foot waterwheel. John Farrell was named as the miller. Surviving buildings, the millrace and evidence of a sluice preserve parts of the system that controlled its water supply. [2]
A house and its working lands
Other records place the mill within a wider estate landscape. In 1838 the townland account identified Millbrook House in the centre of Lack, with about eight acres of wooded ground in the townland. The 1855 valuation listed John Bermingham retaining more than 173 acres, with a house, offices, a miller’s house, flour and tuck mills and kilns among the recorded property. [3]
A shopfront on Dunmore’s square
In Dunmore itself, the building recorded as Thomas Byrne’s combines a house of about 1830 with a shop and public-house frontage added around 1870. The three-storey façade includes a carriage arch, decorated brackets and a surviving nineteenth-century display window. Hand-painted signage adds another crafted element. The architectural survey identifies the frontage as one of relatively few original shopfronts surviving in the town. [4]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Dunmore. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Lack Mill · Milltown Heritage Group
- Lack townland: historical records · Trish O’Donnell / Milltown Heritage Group
- Thomas Byrne, The Square, NIAH30330012 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2026-09-19. How this page was prepared.