placenamesCoolessan
Cúil Leasáin
Along the Roe at Coolessan, successive industries reused the same water supply, while St Canice’s graveyard preserves the site of an earlier Catholic church.
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
- Cúil Leasáin · Irish · main form · validated name
- Coolessan · English · main form
Place & story
Corn, bleaching and whiskey
A mill at Coolessan appears in the civil survey of 1654–56. By 1788 tenants were still being reminded of their obligation to grind corn at the manor mill. William Moody established a distillery in 1821 on premises previously occupied by a bleach mill. An associated corn mill ground both malt for distilling and grain for local customers, using water drawn from the Roe through the millrace. [2]
From flour milling to electricity
By 1893 the Roe Mills complex was producing flour and using a water turbine. After a destructive fire in 1895 it was rebuilt, then acquired by the Limavady Electric Supply Company in 1926 for hydroelectric generation. A second turbine followed in 1938. Electricity production continued until 1965. The buildings were demolished in the early 1980s; the 1998 survey recorded surviving sections of the millrace but replacement houses on the mill site. [2]
St Canice’s old graveyard
The burial ground on Roemill Road occupies the site of a Catholic chapel built in the early 1780s. An 1830s description records a T-shaped building where benches accommodated hundreds but some worshippers still knelt outside. The congregation subsequently moved to St Mary’s on Irish Green Street. The old chapel disappeared, leaving a graveyard enclosed by stone walls and entered through a Gothic archway with iron gates. [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Derry
- Barony
- Keenaght
- Civil parish
- Drumachose
- Within
- Coolessan
- Coordinates
- 55.03188, -6.95208 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1413312 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Coolessan. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Roe Mills, Coolessan: historic building record HB02/13/004 · Department for Communities, Northern Ireland
- St Canice’s Old Graveyard, Coolessan: HB02/13/002 · Department for Communities, Northern Ireland
- Green Lane Museum near Coolessan illustration: based on a Museum, Roe Valley Country Park by Kenneth Allen. 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 2011-12-06. How this page was prepared.