placenamesBallyglass
An Baile Glas
Ballyglass served as a small administrative centre in nineteenth-century Mayo and developed a sporting life shared with the neighbouring villages.
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
- An Baile Glas · Irish · main form · validated name
- Ballyglass · English · main form
Place & story
The courthouse and road
Samuel Lewis described Ballyglass in 1837 as a village and post-town on the road from Hollymount to Castlebar. It belonged to Towaghty parish and the barony of Carra. A small courthouse held petty sessions every second Friday, while a constabulary station provided another administrative presence. These details show the village functioning as a local centre for public business as well as a settlement on a regional road. [2]
Early Gaelic football
Ballintubber GAA’s club history draws on newspaper accounts of football involving Ballyglass during the association’s earliest years. A Connacht Telegraph report published on 26 December 1885 described a match between Ballyglass and Carnacon at Towerhill. Another account, published in January 1886, placed a game in McEvilly’s fields at Ballyglass. The reports connect the village with a network of neighbouring teams, encouraged locally by Valentine Blake of Towerhill. [3]
A school becomes a community centre
The former national school found a new role as Ballyglass Community Centre, accommodating meetings and social activities. The village’s annual sports meetings were formerly held on the Turlough before moving to a larger sportsground. After a break following the forty-fourth meeting in 1995, the sports were revived in 2010. A heritage club established in 2007 added vintage shows and tractor runs to the community calendar. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Mayo
- Barony
- Carra
- Civil parish
- Touaghty
- Within
- Burriscarra
- Coordinates
- 53.73678, -9.18216 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1414312 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Ballyglass. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Ballyglass, Samuel Lewis1837 · Samuel Lewis, Topographical Dictionary of Ireland; hosted by University of Portsmouth
- History of Ballintubber GAA Club · Ballintubber GAA
- Ballyglass community history · Mayo Ireland
- Ballyglass Community Centre, County Mayo illustration: based on a Ballyglass Community Centre, County Mayo (16 May 2016) by Robert Ashby. AI-assisted watercolour and ink adaptation; cream paper margins added, incidental clutter omitted and fine details simplified. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.