placenamesDrumahoe
Droim na hUamha
Schools and a riverside meeting house preserve several chapters of Drumahoe’s community history.
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
- Droim na hUamha · Irish · main form · validated name
- Drumahoe · English · main form
Place & story
Isabella Mills and the bridge school
Drumahoe Primary School’s history names Isabella Mills as a local teacher in 1824. Faughan Bridge Female School followed in 1829, funded by subscriptions and a grant from the Kildare Place Society. An 1840 application describes a stone schoolhouse containing both classroom and teacher’s accommodation, with temporary forms serving as desks. Despite its name, the school taught boys as well as girls. The building later became the Scott Goligher Memorial Orange Hall. [2]
A school receiving evacuees
The replacement elementary school opened on 1 March 1934, with Hugh Tombe as principal. During the Second World War, local families took in children evacuated from bombed areas of Belfast. Their arrival increased enrolment sufficiently for a class to use the old Lismacarrol schoolhouse. The school’s history recalls that some evacuees maintained contact with their host families long afterwards. Later housing development brought further extensions, before this school closed in November 1999. [2]
Noel Campbell’s modern school
Faughan Valley High School represents a different generation of educational architecture. Designed by Noel Campbell and opened in 1959, it used flat roofs, steel windows and extensive glazing rather than traditional schoolhouse forms. The official historic buildings survey highlights its changing two- and three-storey volumes, entrance canopy and curved timber-clad water-tank enclosure. Later extensions enclosed courtyards. The school was vacated in 2007; its architectural importance lies in the ambitious treatment of an economical post-war public building. [3]
A meeting house by the bridge
Faughan Reformed Presbyterian Church traces its congregation to 1770, when dissenting members of Glendermott joined local Covenanting societies. Its own history distinguishes that early congregation from the riverside site acquired in 1790 beside the old bridge at Drumahoe. Samuel Alexander, minister of Bready from 1783, also served Faughan. The account recalls a rural setting that later became surrounded by residential development as the nearby city expanded. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Derry
- Barony
- Tirkeeran
- Civil parish
- Clondermot
- Within
- Drumahoe
- Coordinates
- 54.97138, -7.28162 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1413320 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Drumahoe. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- History of Drumahoe Primary School · R. R. Donaghey, May 2000; Drumahoe Primary School
- Faughan Valley High School, HB01/06/016 · Department for Communities, Historic Environment Division
- A Brief History of Faughan Reformed Presbyterian Church · Faughan Reformed Presbyterian Church
- River Faughan at Drumahoe illustration: based on a The River Faughan by Rossographer. AI-assisted watercolour and ink adaptation; cream paper margins added, incidental clutter omitted and fine details simplified. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0; adapted illustration distributed under the same licence.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2011-12-06. How this page was prepared.