placenamesCleady
Claoideach
Cleady’s crossroads, house gardens and commemorative cross survive in the local archive’s accounts of village life.
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
- Claoideach · Irish · main form · non-validated name
- Cleady · English · main form
Place & story
The Crossroads in memory
Bob Maybury’s recollections of 1915–1925 describe Cleady as the Crossroads, on the road from Kenmare towards Kilgarvan. A side road descended towards Roughty Bridge. He remembered numerous empty, deteriorating houses and an older population, recording a village shaped by departure alongside his affection for the place. [2]
Cleady House and its garden
Maybury also described the approach to Cleady House through white-painted gates and along a curved avenue. Its flower garden contained twelve beds enclosed by low box hedges, with circles, crescents and shamrock shapes among their designs. An orchard supplied apples, plums and cherries, preserving a detailed memory of the house’s productive landscape. [2]
The commemorative cross
The Crossroads monument commemorates Denis Tuohy of Gortalassa, killed in Kenmare in May 1921, and Con Looney of Rossbui, killed at Killorglin in September 1922. Mark Daly’s local history records their former comrade Ned O’Sullivan helping raise money in America for the memorial, linking emigration with remembrance at home. [2]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Kerry
- Barony
- Glanarought
- Civil parish
- Kenmare
- Within
- Gortagass
- Coordinates
- 51.89238, -9.53802
- Logainm ID
- 101100 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Cleady. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Kenmare Chronicle 2024: A Trip into Town, pages 6–13 and 42–43 · Kenmare Chronicle; recollections of Bob Maybury and monument history by Mark Daly
- Cleady River illustration: based on a Cleady River by Michael A Smithson. AI-assisted watercolour and ink adaptation; cream paper margins added, incidental clutter omitted and fine details simplified. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2026-06-17. How this page was prepared.