placenamesBarry
Barraigh
Barry’s surviving industrial and street features recall a Longford village once served by quarterly fairs, a corn mill and an endowed school.
The name
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
- Barraigh · Irish · main form · validated name
- Barry · English · main form
Place & story
A village of four fairs
Samuel Lewis’s 1837 account places Barry on the road to Ballymahon and records four annual fairs:27 January, 28 April, 28 July and 27 October. A constabulary station added to the village’s administrative role. Education depended in part on aristocratic patronage: the Dowager Countess of Rosse maintained a school for poor children. Lewis also noted slight remains of an earlier castle near the village and a high mound in its vicinity. [2]
The corn mill and its water supply
The former corn mill west of Barry dates from around 1800. Its industrial complex included a kiln, a weir and a millrace, with timber and iron machinery surviving when the architectural survey was made. The Valuation Office mill books name Robert Christie as miller around 1854 and give a rateable value of £16, indicating a small operation. A double-arched limestone road bridge, also dated to around 1800, crosses the stream and former millrace beside the complex. [3] [4]
A communal source of water
At the southern end of the main street, a cast-iron pump stands in a recess in the village’s limestone boundary wall. Dated to around 1900, it has a fluted shaft and spout, a conical cap and a curved handle. The architectural inventory identifies it as a reminder of the communal water supply before mains services. Nearby paired gate piers and decorative iron gates give the roadside wall an unusually elaborate finish for a rural setting. [5] [6]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Longford
- Barony
- Shrule
- Civil parish
- Kilcommock
- Civil parish
- Taghshinny
- Within
- Kilcommock
- Coordinates
- 53.59860, -7.75830 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1414157 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Barry. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Barry: A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland 1837 · Samuel Lewis; Library Ireland
- Barry corn mill, inventory 13314007 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- Barry bridge, inventory 13314008 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- Barry water pump, inventory 13314012 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- Barry boundary wall and gates, inventory 13314013 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.