St Brigid appears around the county

WHAT LIES BENEATH? A spring scene in Kilbree Upper.

A look at Mayo’s Kilbrees and Kilbrides

John Callaghan

There are a full 35 townlands with the name Kilbride, meaning (St) Bridget’s Church, in Ireland – and five of these are in Mayo.
Especially for the year that’s in it, when we finally honoured our principal female saint, Naomh Bríde or Saint Brigid, I thought it was high time I went out and discovered how many placenames are associated with her in Mayo.
The closest St Brigid-derived placename to Westport is a townland passed through en route to Castlebar – Kilbree – but did you know there are two townlands, Kilbree Upper and Kilbree Lower?
Well, I wasn’t really aware of that either, until I went out one evening in early March in search of Keeloges, or Na Caológa, in the Parish of Islandeady (to be the subject of another article).

Worth battling thickets
I parked up alongside Padraic Joyce’s farm, and just as I was about to get out of the car to begin my explorations, I spotted a ‘church’ written in red alongside a red circle on my OS Discovery Map No. 31, and I decided to walk in that direction to see if I could find it.
Fortunately, Michael Joyce happened to come along the road in his blue van and he very kindly pointed the graveyard out to me, with a caution that it was fully wired off, located on private land, quite overgrown with brambles and briars and might prove extremely difficult for me to access.
I carried on regardless and did manage to make my way in through the thickets. I found the ruins of an old church that I later discovered was in fact an early Medieval church site named Kilbride, with adjacent altar and graveyard. The actual townland in which it is located is Kilbree Upper, and the land belongs to Marian Irwin, who wrote a paper about it in Westport Historical Society’s journal, ‘Cathair na Mart’, in 1998.
I moved around carefully within the site and tried to take some photographs. It is completely overgrown, and a phone call to Marian confirmed that it had been cleared 25 years ago coinciding with her research. The article in ‘Cathair na Mart’ was part of her thesis for a Diploma in Archaeology that she obtained in UCG in 1998.

Five Kilbrides
As mentioned, there are five townlands named Kilbride in Mayo, each in a different barony – one in Newport (Burrishoole), one in Gallen, one in Ross, one in Clanmorris and one in Tirawley. The last one is also the name of the Civil Parish, located west of the parish of Lacken in the extreme northwest corner of Mayo.
Kilbride Parish, encompassing Leenane, Finny and Bundorragha, extends into Mayo, and Kilbride townland in Ross Barony is on the tip of the promontory that juts into Lough Mask.
Holy wells abound in these townlands, dedicated to the saint; some are said to have curative properties. Each townland also has an associated St Bridget’s (or St Bríd’s) church.
The Ordnance Survey Name Books entry of 1838 for the Kilbride in the barony of Clanmorris is particularly noteworthy for the names of neighbouring townlands it reveals:
“[Comprising] 250 acres of arable and pasture land, including 7 acres of bog and less than 1 acre of water. [Situated] at the eastern end of the parish... Bounded on the north by Curskeagh, Shunghanagh and Mayo Parks, west by Knockaunnabroona and Corisland [sic], east by Knockaunaghul and Cloonbaul, south by Fahybeg, Cullentragh, Glebe and Gortafuntaun […] There is a Roman Catholic chapel situated on the north boundary, east of the old Abbey of Mayo. There are two gravel pits near its north boundary; also, a pound for cattle. The village of Mayo is partly situated on its western boundary; also, a burial ground. There is a triangulation station called after this townland in the eastern part of it.”
Together, the meanings of all these townlands form a treasure trove of local landscape description and history: Curskeagh (An Chorrsceach) means ‘The Prominent Thorn Bush’; Shunghanagh (SeangΡnach) means ‘Place of Ants’; Mayo Parks (PΡirceanna Mhaigh Eo) is ‘Fields of the Plain of the Yew Tree’; Knockaunnabroona (CnocΡn an Bhrúnaigh) is Browne’s Hillock (this whole area was owned by the Marquis of Sligo); Corisland or, more correctly, Corlisland (An Corr Lios) is ‘The Prominent Fort’; Knockaunaghul or Knockaunakill (CnocΡn an Choill) means ‘Hillock of the Hazel’; Cloonbaul (Cluain Ball), translates to ‘Meadow of the Baals’, where a baal was a portion or division; Fahybeg (An Fhaiche Bheag) is ‘The Small Green’; Cullentragh (An Chuileanntrach) means ‘The Place of Holly’; Glebe refers to church land, and Gortafuntaun (Gort an PhuntΡin) means ‘Field of the (?) Round Heavy Stone’.

Dr John O’Callaghan is a mountain walk leader who has organised and led expeditions both at home and abroad. He has served on the board of Mountaineering Ireland and is currently on the Irish Uplands Forum board. In 2012, he wrote the winning article that secured Westport’s accolade as the Irish Times’ ‘Best Place to Live in Ireland’