placenamesBallinascarty
Béal na Scairte
Ballinascarty’s links with the Ford family are commemorated beside the remains of a village once served by two railway routes.
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
- Béal na Scairte · Irish · main form · validated name
- Ballinascarty · English · main form
- Ballinascarthy · English · main form · local name
Place & story
The Ford family’s departure
William Ford, Henry Ford’s father, was born in the Ballinascarthy area in 1826. The family left during the Great Famine in 1847 and settled near Dearborn, Michigan, where Henry was born in 1863. This is an ancestral association: the motor manufacturer himself was born in America. The Henry Ford museum preserves material recording the village’s later commemoration, connecting the family’s Cork origins with the history of the American company. [2]
The Model T monument
A stainless-steel Model T monument was unveiled in the village on 3 September 2000 as part of the Henry Ford Millennium Project. The Henry Ford museum holds a record of the ceremony in the Ford R. Bryan Papers. A further commemoration followed on 20 April 2017, when William Clay Ford Jr unveiled a plaque and bench to mark a century of Ford operations in Ireland. The village’s family connection thus gained a visible public setting. [2] [3]
A junction for Clonakilty and Courtmacsherry
Ballinascarthy station opened with the Clonakilty branch in 1886. It later became the junction for the Timoleague and Courtmacsherry railway, opened in stages in 1890–91. The two routes used opposite sides of an island platform, allowing the small settlement to serve as a point of interchange. The system closed at the end of March 1961. Railscot’s photographic record notes that the N 71 subsequently occupied the route of the former Clonakilty branch through the village. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Cork
- Barony
- Carbery East (E.D.)
- Civil parish
- Kilmaloda
- Coordinates
- 51.67249, -8.85296 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1166946 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Ballinascarty. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Bob Clarke at the Model T monument unveiling, Ballinascarty, 3 September 2000, THF102540 · The Henry Ford, Ford R. Bryan Papers
- Bill Ford returns to the family’s ancestral home town, 20 April 2017 · Ford Motor Company
- Ballinascarthy, photographic record 73974, 30 June 2020 · Mark Poustie, Railscot
- Model T monument, Ballinascarty, County Cork illustration: based on a Model T monument, Ballinascarty, County Cork (27 June 2015) by Jonathan Thacker. 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 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.