placenamesBallynastangford
Baile na Stanfard
Ballynastangford’s evidence ranges from a prehistoric burial monument to the Stangford association and separate census returns for its Upper and Lower divisions.
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
- Baile na Stanfard · Irish · main form · validated name
- Ballynastangford · English · main form
Place & story
A court tomb in the Lower townland
The court tomb at Ballynastangford Lower lies near the base of a sheltered ridge, with bogland to the west. The Mayo Abbey archaeological survey describes a gallery divided into two chambers and aligned east to west. Surveyors found its plan little changed from the earlier national survey, although clearance stones had accumulated around it and the enclosing mound was difficult to trace. The remains preserve a much older layer of settlement beneath the later farming landscape. [2]
The Stangford association
Writing in 1908, Hubert Thomas Knox included the Stangfords of Ballynastangford among families he thought descended from early colonists in Clanmorris. His wording was tentative. It offers a historical association for the locality, without establishing a particular castle, founder or continuous family occupation. The connection belongs to the documentary history of the name rather than a verified local legend. [3]
Upper and Lower in the census
The nineteenth-century census counted Ballynastangford Upper and Lower separately within Kilcolman parish. For 1841 it recorded seventy-nine people in Lower and nine in Upper. The 1851 column gives ten for Upper but enters no population for Lower. These are townland returns, not a separate village total. Their marked difference cautions against treating the two adjoining divisions as a single unchanged community. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Mayo
- Barony
- Clanmorris
- Civil parish
- Kilcolman
- Within
- Ballynastangford Lower
- Within
- Ballynastangford Upper
- Coordinates
- 53.76539, -9.00096 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1167027 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Ballynastangford. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Mayo Abbey Archaeological Survey: site 20, Ballynastangford Lower · Mayo Abbey Archaeological Survey, county library digital copy
- The History of the County of Mayo to the Close of the Sixteenth Century, 1908 · Hubert Thomas Knox
- Census of Ireland 1851: County Mayo, page 433 · Census Commissioners
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.