placenamesGoldenball
The Golden Ball junction brings together a public house, the entrance to a former estate and the history of a local football club.
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
- Goldenball · English · main form
Place & story
The public house and the Abbey gates
Goldenball centres on the meeting of Glenamuck Road and Enniskerry Road in Kilternan. An inspector visiting in July 2016 recorded the Golden Ball public house as a seven-bay building with blind dormers in its roof. Beside its grounds stood the protected gate piers of Kiltiernan Abbey, marking an avenue running west. The report places the familiar roadside business beside a surviving entrance to the older estate landscape. [2]
A football ground and a restoration effort
Wayside Celtic Football Club was founded in 1948 by men from the Kilternan district. After playing initially in Stepaside, it spent decades at Golden Ball before moving to Jackson Park. The club’s own history records another local connection: for its fiftieth anniversary in 1998, members traced the missing gold-flecked balls from the old Abbey gate pillars and restored them. The episode connects a sporting organisation with the distinctive objects associated with the locality’s name. [3]
The parish church on Enniskerry Road
St Tiernan’s Church of Ireland stands a short distance north of the crossroads. The Church of Ireland survey identifies John Semple as its architect and dates it to 1826. Samuel Lewis’s account, published in 1837, records funding from the Board of First Fruits, Lord Powerscourt and a local assessment. Lewis also notes a twopenny post at the small village of Golden Ball, documenting its role on the road to Enniskerry. [4] [5]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Goldenball. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Inspector’s Report PL06D.246537, site inspection 15 July 2016, page2 · Hugh Mannion, An Bord Pleanála
- Wayside Celtic: our history · Wayside Celtic Football Club
- Kilternan, Golden Ball, St Tiernan, survey110700 · David Lawrence, Representative Church Body
- Kilternan, A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, 1837 · Samuel Lewis
- Saint Tiernan’s Church near Goldenball, as photographed in 2007 illustration: based on a Church of Ireland, Kiltiernan by JP. 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 2026-08-05. How this page was prepared.