placenamesFortel
Foirtil
A local interview preserves memories of school, farm work and training in the fields at Fortel, also written Fortal.
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
- Foirtil · Irish · main form · validated name
- Fortel · English · main form
Place & story
School and farm work
Interviewed for the 2011 Birr Year Review, Tommy Feenane recalled his family arriving in Fortal in 1918 when his father bought a farm. Born in 1924, he remembered walking to school at six, while teacher Miss O’Sullivan cycled from Castle Street. His childhood work included milking cows, feeding pigs and cutting turf on a farm still worked with horses. [2]
Training in the fields
Feenane trained for running by circling his home fields after the day’s farm work; his preferred distance was 440 yards. He also played football for White Rovers, representing Crinkill and Fortal, and recalled its 1951 intermediate final victory over Ballinamere. In 1946 he became treasurer of the renamed Saint Brendan’s Athletic Club. [2]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Offaly
- Barony
- Ballybritt
- Civil parish
- Birr
- Coordinates
- 53.07754, -7.83585 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1414393 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Fortel. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Run for Your Life: The Story of Tommy Feenane, Fortal, Birr Year Review2011, p.55 · Michael Donegan
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2017-12-01. How this page was prepared.