placenamesBolea
Both Liath
Bolea’s history includes a small rural school and water-powered mills. It also enters the region’s outlaw traditions through James Hopkins, the Bolea man remembered in accounts of Cushy Glen.
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
- Both Liath · Irish · main form · validated name
- Bolea · English · main form
Place & story
A one-room school
The former school at 77 Bolea Road appears in the Dunbeg South Extension heritage assessment’s reproduction of the historic building register. Described as a late eighteenth-century building, it contained a single classroom and was originally thatched. The Kildare Street Society later supported it. Subsequently converted to a dwelling, the modest building retains a close relationship with the road, its gable standing against the roadside. [2]
Waterpower and flax
The same assessment traces a Bolea mill complex through successive Ordnance Survey maps. A mill shown in 1831 was labelled a flax mill in 1853 and disused in 1907. A second mill was already described as ruined in 1853 and disappeared from later mapping. A millrace and pond accompanied the complex. These recorded changes show several phases of water-powered industry rather than one continuously operating business. [2]
Bolea emigrants
The Presbyterian Historical Society’s Drumachose emigrant list records several Bolea residents leaving for Philadelphia in 1833 and 1834. They include William Campbell, James and Jane McCloskey, Samuel Smith, and members of the Wisely family. The listed ages range from sixteen-year-old William Wisely to forty-five-year-old Margaret Wisely. These entries connect the small locality with the wider movement from the Roe Valley to North America. [3]
James Hopkins and the outlaw story
Local tradition associates James Hopkins of Bolea with the shooting of the highwayman Cushy Glen on the road between Limavady and Coleraine. Margaret Lueg’s investigation distinguishes the numerous later tales from the limited documentary evidence. She reports the story in the nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey memoirs and records Hopkins’s death at Bolea in 1853. The episode belongs to the folklore of the surrounding roads; the many murders and dramatic embellishments attributed to Glen cannot all be treated as established history. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Derry
- Barony
- Keenaght
- Civil parish
- Drumachose
- Within
- Bolea
- Coordinates
- 55.07637, -6.90394 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1413309 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Bolea. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Dunbeg South Extension: archaeology and cultural heritage technical appendices 5.3 and 5.4, PDF pages 27 and 31 · Gahan and Long Ltd
- Emigrants from Drumachose and Limavady · Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland
- The Outlaw Cushy Glen · Margaret Lueg, Roe Valley Newsbrowser
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2011-12-06. How this page was prepared.