Johnstown's unusual square belongs to a planned eighteenth-century settlement. The nearby Ballyspellan spa drew visitors and medical writers, while singer and athlete Ronan Tynan grew up on a local farm.
Illustration, St Kieran's Church, Johnstown
⊕Recorded locationJohnstown52.74965° N · 7.55668° WInteractive map supplied by OpenStreetMap.
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 Sheáin· Irish · main form · validated name
Johnstown· English · main form
Place & story
A square with eight sides
John Healy of Foulkscourt laid out Johnstown's central space in 1770. Although called the Square, it follows an octagonal plan, clearly recorded on nineteenth-century valuation mapping. The town stood on the road to Cork through Cashel. By 1837 Samuel Lewis counted 146 houses and 875 inhabitants, alongside a dispensary, churches and police station. Its eight annual fairs dealt chiefly in pigs. The planned centre and through road therefore belonged to a settlement with both architectural ambition and a practical commercial role.[2][3]
The Ballyspellan spa
Ballyspellan's mineral waters attracted attention well before Lewis's account. The Edward Worth Library holds two copies of John Taafe's 1724 tract The Irish Spaw, or Ballispallan Water. John Burges published another pamphlet the following year, dedicated to the ladies and gentlemen visiting the waters. Such publications promoted the spring as a health resort and offered instructions about drinking the water and taking exercise. The library identifies Ballyspellan as a chalybeate spring, meaning that its mineral water contained iron salts. The surviving books document the enthusiasm surrounding spa-going in the early eighteenth century.[4]
A church rebuilt within an older form
The Catholic church of Saint Kieran and Saint Michael on Chapel Street bears the date 1831. Its cruciform plan includes a nave, transepts and a shallow chancel. Reconstruction in 1961 gave it its present composition, followed by further changes to the sanctuary. The architectural inventory records its slate roof, bellcote and cast-iron rainwater fittings, preserving details of a building that has developed through successive phases of parish life.[5]
People & connections
Ronan Tynan's Johnstown beginnings
Tenor, doctor and former Paralympic athlete Ronan Tynan grew up on a farm in Johnstown. In a 2019 interview he recalled singing with his father while milking cows. He later studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin and began formal vocal training in his thirties. His international career included performances with the Irish Tenors, solo work and singing at Ronald Reagan's funeral in 2004. Johnstown is his childhood home; he was born in Dublin's Coombe Hospital in 1960.[6]
Both counts use the 2016 settlement boundary, allowing like-for-like comparison. CSO supplies the 2022 count on this older boundary for comparison only. The official 2022 Built Up Area has different boundaries.
View population figures
Johnstown — Census 2016 settlement footprint — census population
Johnstown, Kilkenny — Census town, CSO 2006 report
2002–2006: census town
445people · 2006
These are the historical areas published in the 2006 census report. Boundaries may differ between censuses and from modern settlements. Legal towns, environs and suburbs are shown separately; none has been combined into a modern settlement total.
View population figures
Johnstown, Kilkenny — Census town, CSO 2006 report — census population
Johnstown, Kilkenny — Census town, CSO 1996 report
1991–1996: census town
460people · 1996
These are the historical areas published in the 1996 census report. Boundaries may differ between censuses and from modern settlements. Legal towns, environs and suburbs are shown separately; none has been combined into a modern settlement total.
View population figures
Johnstown, Kilkenny — Census town, CSO 1996 report — census population
Johnstown, Kilkenny — Census town, CSO 1986 report
1981–1986: census town
408people · 1986
Figures cover the historical town area printed in the 1986 report. Boundaries may have changed between censuses. Legal town, environs and suburb totals remain separate and differ from modern settlement boundaries.
View population figures
Johnstown, Kilkenny — Census town, CSO 1986 report — census population
These figures use different area definitions. Read the boundary note before comparing them.
Johnstown, Kilkenny
Published census settlement populations
444people · 2016
Settlement boundaries changed during this period. Differences may reflect boundary changes as well as population change. Where a 2011 legal-town-and-environs count is shown, it has not been recalculated onto the 2016 settlement boundary.
placenames
