placenamesCadamstown
Baile Mhic Ádaim
The Silver River village preserves a former mill, reused medieval carving and an unusually old bridge.
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
- Baile Mhic Ádaim · Irish · main form · validated name
- Cadamstown · English · main form
Place & story
The mill on the Silver River
The surviving mill at Cadamstown was built in 1831 by Sina Manifold of Cadamstown House. The architectural inventory records a£1,000 loan to finance its construction and describes it as a replacement for an earlier mill. A race connected the building with the Silver River. Later converted to woollen production, it ceased operating in 1903. Its roofless walls preserve the scale of an industry that once depended on the river’s power. [2]
Medieval carving in a nineteenth-century church
St Luna’s Church was built in 1842 after its predecessor was destroyed in the 1839 storm. Its western front incorporates older carved stones. Rachel Moss’s sculpture survey identifies a Romanesque corbel and a later medieval head, reputedly brought from Leitir church; further carved fragments were incorporated into Cadamstown House’s gateposts. The present church also preserves a 1934 marble altar donated by Cadamstown native Monsignor Timothy Dempsey, who ministered in St Louis. [3] [4]
The older crossing at Castlefield
Castlefield Bridge crosses the Silver River near Cadamstown. The county architectural survey dates its pointed stone arch to the fifteenth or sixteenth century and associates it with the nearby castle. It identifies the crossing as a rare survivor from before the widespread alteration of narrow bridges following the 1727 Road Act. The bridge represents a much earlier stage of local transport than the nineteenth-century mill. [5]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Offaly
- Barony
- Ballybritt
- Civil parish
- Letterluna
- Coordinates
- 53.13107, -7.65634 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1414289 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Cadamstown. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Former Morrow’s Mill, Cadamstown: record 14817002 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- Saint Luna’s Catholic Church: record 14817001 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- St Lugna, Cadamstown: record 15275 · Rachel Moss, Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland
- An Introduction to the Architectural Heritage of County Offaly, page 9 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2014-10-31. How this page was prepared.