placenamesCarbury
Cairbre
Nineteenth-century descriptions and surviving registers reveal the institutions serving Carbury’s rural parish.
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
- Cairbre · Irish · main form
- Carbury · English · main form
Place & story
Farms and country houses
Samuel Lewis's 1837 account describes Carbury's limestone margins beside the Bog of Allen as largely arable, with some farms entirely under tillage. He names Drummin House as the residence of Dr R. Grattan, Ballyhagan as Miss Palmer's home, and Newberry House as E. Wolstenholme's residence, alongside Viscount Harberton's nearby seat. [2]
An extensive church union
Carbury's Church of Ireland vicarage headed a union including seven other parishes, among them Cadamstown, Carrick and Nurney. Lord Harberton held the patronage, while the Marquess of Downshire possessed the rectorial interest. Lewis records a small, scattered glebe of three and three-quarter acres and no glebe-house. [2]
Schools supported in different ways
Lewis counted approximately sixty children in a subscription-supported parochial school. Two fee-paying schools taught about ninety more, divided between roughly sixty boys and thirty girls. His figures record several forms of elementary education operating within the parish before the Great Famine. [2]
Carbury and Dunforth registers
The National Library catalogues Catholic registers under the combined name Carbury and Dunforth, reflecting a church district extending beyond this civil parish. Its earliest microfilmed volume contains baptisms from October 1821, marriages from November that year, and a later series of deaths from 1869 to 1879. A second volume continues baptisms and marriages into the 1880s. [3]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Carbury. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Carbery or Castle-Carbery, Kildare, A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland,1837 · Samuel Lewis
- Carbury and Dunforth, microfilm04206/10–11 · National Library of Ireland
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2021-10-29. How this page was prepared.