A small nineteenth-century market village stands near prehistoric monuments and a lakeside garden remembering a New York fire chaplain’s family connection.
Keshcarrigan Lake
⊕Recorded locationKeshcarrigan54.01767° N · 7.94483° WInteractive map supplied by OpenStreetMap.
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
Ceis Charraigín· Irish · main form · validated name
Keshcarrigan· English · main form
Place & story
A village of ten fairs
Samuel Lewis recorded Keshcarrigan as Cashcarrigan in 1837, when it contained eighteen houses and ninety-four inhabitants. It stood on the road from Carrick-on-Shannon to Ballinamore, with a constabulary station, a dispensary and a penny post linking it to Carrick. Ten annual fairs punctuated its calendar, beginning on 1 February and ending on 21 December. This small settlement therefore supplied several services to its surrounding countryside, while repeated fair days brought trading activity into the village through much of the year.[2]
New dates for Sheebeg
The prehistoric landscape around Keshcarrigan includes the cairn at Sheebeg. Human bones taken from its tomb during an unlicensed excavation in Christmas week 1930 entered the National Museum of Ireland in 1931. RTÉ reported in July 2026 that osteoarchaeological analysis and radiocarbon dating identified an adult male and a probable adult female, with remains dating to between 5,300 and 5,600 years ago. The scientific work places these individuals in the early Middle Neolithic, giving the nearby monument a much firmer chronological setting than its later legendary associations.[3]
People & connections
Mychal Judge’s family connection
A peace garden beside Kesh Lake was dedicated to Fr Mychal Judge on 11 September 2005. The Franciscan, chaplain to New York firefighters, died in the attacks of 11 September 2001. His connection was through his father’s ancestral home: during a visit in 2000 he sought it out and took away a pebble from its remains. His twin sister, Dympna Jessich, attended the dedication at the lakeshore known locally as Judge’s Shore, presenting the American and New York City Fire Department flags that had covered his coffin.[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
Keshcarrigan — Census 2016 settlement footprint — census population
These figures use different area definitions. Read the boundary note before comparing them.
Keshcarrigan, Leitrim
Published census settlement populations
155people · 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.
Keshcarrigan Lake illustration: based on a Keshcarrigan Lake by John M. AI-assisted watercolour and ink adaptation; cream paper margins added, incidental clutter omitted and fine details simplified. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
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