Kilcummin’s community history is preserved through a modern parish church, a long-established football club and the teaching networks of Sliabh Luachra music and dance.
⊕Recorded locationKilcummin52.09780° N · 9.47077° 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
Cill Chuimín· Irish · main form · validated name
Kilcummin· English · main form
Place & story
A church anniversary becomes a local history project
Our Lady of Lourdes Church marked its golden jubilee in June 2026. Alongside the celebrations, sixth-class pupils from Anabla, Coolick and Kilcummin national schools researched a booklet about the church, grounds, grotto, Mass Rock and parish cemeteries. Former building-committee members joined the anniversary gathering. This project made the church's history a subject of investigation by children from across the parish, linking the building opened in 1976 with the community that continues to use and interpret it.[2]
People & connections
Football before and after formal affiliation
Kilcummin GAA dates its formal foundation to 1910 and affiliation to the Kerry County Board to 1913, while acknowledging earlier local teams. It won the inaugural East Kerry League in 1925 and the East Kerry senior championship in 1973. Former club chairman Seán Kelly later served as GAA president from 2003 to 2006. His career gives the parish a specific link to the national administration of a sport rooted in local club work.[3]
Teaching the Sliabh Luachra tradition
Kilcummin's Comhaltas branch was established in 1973. David Kearney's study of Irish traditional music describes the district's place in a teaching network visited by fiddler Tom Billy Murphy. Later, John Moriarty taught set dancing both locally and in Barraduff, and helped re-establish Comhaltas activity in Gneeveguilla. The branch published John Herlihy's local and musical history in 2004. These connections show tradition being sustained through lessons, dancing and neighbouring communities, rather than confined within one parish boundary.[4]
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
Kilcummin — Census 2016 settlement footprint — census population
These figures use different area definitions. Read the boundary note before comparing them.
Kilcummin, Kerry
Published census settlement populations
435people · 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