placenamesCastletown
Baile an Chaisleáin
Churchtown’s medieval church ruins stand within a raised burial enclosure showing traces of earlier boundaries.
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 an Chaisleáin · Irish · main form · non-validated name
- Castletown · English · main form
Place & story
Enclosures around the church
The 2011 Laois Burial Grounds Survey recorded Churchtown’s cemetery one to two metres above the surrounding land. Its roughly circular stone boundary enclosed earthen banks interpreted as at least one, and possibly two, earlier enclosure phases. The medieval church occupied the raised centre, with four walls surviving; the western gable and northern wall were best preserved. A twentieth-century extension lay immediately south of the stone enclosure. [2]
Different forms of remembrance
The survey distinguished inscribed headstones, early eighteenth-century slabs, Celtic crosses and rows of plain stone markers. Inside the church ruins, three matching silver-painted iron crosses marked burials of monks from the nearby De La Salle monastery. These modest markers form part of a much wider variety of commemorative work within the cemetery. [2]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Castletown. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Laois Burial Grounds Survey 2011, Volume 2, Churchtown L032, printed pages 55–56 · L.W. Barker, N. Gilligan and G. Fegan, Barker Archaeological Services for Laois County Council
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.