placenamesBlack Bull
Black Bull’s history follows the meeting of roads, from an eighteenth-century route to Athboy through a nineteenth-century posting house to the arrival of the M3.
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
- Black Bull · English · main form
Place & story
A landmark on the road to Athboy
Black Bull was already a recognised road landmark in the eighteenth century. An Irish parliamentary act of 1731 concerned the road from Black Bull to Athboy. A manuscript map in the National Library’s Longfield collection records the lands around Black Bull Inn at Piercetown, with notes on land quality and crops. Broadly dated between 1770 and 1840, it places the inn within a working agricultural landscape as well as a network of routes. [2] [3]
A posting house for travellers
James Fraser’s 1844 Handbook for Travellers in Ireland describes Black Bull as a village and crossroads with a good posting house. He reached it three and a half miles beyond Clonee while following the road towards Dunshaughlin. The guide lists nearby country houses and then continues through the hamlet called the Bush. Its sequence shows how travellers experienced Black Bull as a stopping point between established settlements on the journey out of Dublin. [4]
The crossroads remembered after the motorway
Speaking in the Seanad on 1 July 2010, transport minister Noel Dempsey recalled queues where the Trim road met the Navan road at Black Bull. Drivers had developed an informal custom of letting alternate cars emerge from the side road. He said the M3’s opening had changed that situation. A 2022 planning inspector’s landscape description placed the village beside the former Fairyhouse station, with the motorway running through the Tolka valley and separating it from land to the west. [5] [6]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Black Bull. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Statute Law Revision Act 2007, schedule 2:1731,5 Geo.2, c.17 · Irish Statute Book
- Map of lands surrounding Black Bull Inn, Piercetown, MS21 F.15/(052) · National Library of Ireland, Longfield Map Collection
- Handbook for Travellers in Ireland 1844, Dublin road description · James Fraser; Navan and District Historical Society
- Seanad debate, 1 July 2010, Road Traffic Bill 2009, page 894 · Houses of the Oireachtas, speech by Noel Dempsey
- Inspector’s Report ABP-312614-22, site location description, page 3 · Philip Davis, An Bord Pleanála
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2026-06-09. How this page was prepared.