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
An Cúl Buí· Irish · main form · validated name
Coolboy· English · main form
Place & story
Eight fairs in a small village
Samuel Lewis recorded Coolboy, also called Castleboy, as a village of 105 people in 1837. It stood on the road between Carnew and Rathdrum and held eight fairs annually. Their spread across the year, from January to the winter Ember period, gave the small settlement repeated occasions for trade. Lewis also identified neighbouring Coolboy House as John Chamney’s residence, placing the village and house together in his description of the Shillelagh district.[2]
The form of Coolboy House
Coolboy House stands south of the village. Its main front has five bays and rises through two storeys above a basement, with a recessed addition to one side. A decorated stone surround and pediment emphasise the central doorway. The heritage account dates the house broadly to the middle of the eighteenth century while noting a belief that parts may be older. The surviving form is therefore more securely described than an exact date for its earliest construction.[3]
People & connections
The Symes and Chamney associations
The house was associated with the Symes family before the Chamneys. Mitchelbourne Symes, resident in the later eighteenth century, became a county justice of the peace in 1762 and sheriff in 1767. He died in 1795, leaving small bequests to the poor of Carnew and Kilcommon parishes. James Symes inherited the property. The house later passed to the Chamney family, and Joseph Chamney sold it in 1868, continuing a sequence of changes in ownership.[3]
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
Coolboy — Census 2016 settlement footprint — census population
These figures use different area definitions. Read the boundary note before comparing them.
Coolboy, Wicklow
Published census settlement populations
267people · 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