The settlement’s nineteenth-century rebuilding and a surviving archival letter connect Toornafulla with changing village life and the Irish language revival.
⊕Recorded locationToornafulla52.36516° N · 9.15136° WInteractive map supplied by OpenStreetMap.
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
Tuar na Fola· Irish · main form · validated name
Toornafulla· English · main form
Place & story
Rebuilding above the river
West Limerick Heritage records that the village moved to higher ground after a major flood of the Allaughan River in 1839. The change followed the creation of Tournafulla parish from part of Killeedy in 1838, and a village bridge was built across the river in 1841. These dates place the reshaping of the settlement within a short sequence of parish formation, flooding and new infrastructure. The older riverbank village and the later settlement therefore belong to different stages in Toornafulla’s development.[2]
Completing Saint Patrick’s
Saint Patrick’s Church took several years to complete. Construction began in 1855, but a shortage of money delayed the roof until a loan from the Earl of Devon enabled the work to proceed. Fr Richard Shanahan celebrated the first Mass there on 1 February 1859. The building became a focus of the developing village. A new cemetery opened in 1962; previously, local burials had commonly taken place at Templeglantine, Monagea or Abbeyfeale.[2]
People & connections
Timothy O’Neill Lane’s correspondence
A letter preserved in the National Library of Ireland supplies a precise connection between Toornafulla and the lexicographer Timothy O’Neill Lane. Dated 12 November 1909 and addressed to Roger Casement, the three-page manuscript concerns the production of Lane’s English–Irish dictionary. The library records that its paper bears an embossed Tournafulla, County Limerick heading. Preserved among Casement’s papers, this is a contemporary trace of Lane’s dictionary work associated with a local address, rather than a claim inferred from the later fame of his book.[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
Toornafulla — Census 2016 settlement footprint — census population
These figures use different area definitions. Read the boundary note before comparing them.
Toornafulla, Limerick
Published census settlement populations
144people · 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