placenamesBanemore
An Bán Mór
A north Kerry crossroads with memories of an estate house, its approach avenue and a surviving oak woodland.
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
- An Bán Mór · Irish · main form · validated name
- Banemore · English · main form
- Banemore Cross · English · main form · local name
Place & story
Banemore House
Banemore House stood in the townland south-east of the crossroads. The Landed Estates database traces Thomas O’Halloran there in 1814 and Robert John Palmer in 1837. At Griffith’s Valuation, Palmer’s house was assessed at £17 15s. Drawing on Valerie Bary’s research, the database also records its use as a Famine soup kitchen. The house later became a ruin. [2]
The avenue in local memory
Writing in the Lyreacrompane and District Journal, Michael Thornton placed the house about three hundred yards from Banemore Cross along the road called the Avenue. He described entrance gates, a stone-surfaced approach and a field known as the lawn, formerly a recreation area for the household. His account explicitly draws on local memory, preserving the estate’s everyday landscape as well as its owners’ names. [3]
An oak wood in the farming landscape
Banemore Wood was surveyed in August 2007 for the National Survey of Native Woodlands. The seven-hectare site had woodland on the 1840s maps. Sessile oak dominated its canopy, with hazel beneath and holly and hawthorn also present. The survey recorded it as privately owned; its value lies in a relatively natural woodland surviving among the surrounding agricultural land. [4]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Banemore. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Banemore House: property 2083 · University of Galway, Landed Estates
- Banemore House, Lyreacrompane and District Journal, issue 2, pages 10–11 · Michael Thornton
- National Survey of Native Woodlands 2003–2008, volume 3d, site 1745: Banemore Wood · Philip Perrin and colleagues, report to National Parks and Wildlife Service
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.