placenamesBelclare
Béal Chláir
Lewis distinguishes Mrs Kirwan’s school from two fee-paying schools in the parish.
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
- Béal Chláir · Irish · main form · non-validated name
- Belclare · English · main form
Place & story
Three schools with different support
Samuel Lewis’s 1837 Belclare account records a school for Protestant girls supported entirely by Mrs Kirwan of Castle Hackett. Two pay schools stood at places he named Wood’s Quay and Carabeg. Together those two schools taught 148 boys and twenty-one girls. The figures belong to the pay schools; Lewis did not give a pupil total for Mrs Kirwan’s school. [2]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Belclare. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Belclare: Samuel Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837), historical text reproduced by Galway County Heritage Office · Samuel Lewis
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.