placenamesBarna
Bearna
The lost Lee family house and surviving records trace Barna’s history beside Newport in north Tipperary.
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
- Bearna · Irish · main form · validated name
- Barna · English · main form
Place & story
The Lee estate
The University of Galway’s Landed Estates research traces the Lee family’s purchase of Barna lands to 1668, citing a later family history. The family’s connections extended into County Limerick through marriage and property. Henry A. Lee held land in Kilnarath and Kilvellane at the time of Griffith’s Valuation. A later estate return recorded 526 acres in the 1870s, with the owner living in England. These records place Barna within a network of landed property stretching beyond the immediate district. [2]
A house that has disappeared
Barna House was a Lee residence during the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth. Ambrose Leet’s directory named G. Lee there in 1814; H. Lee was proprietor in 1837 and at Griffith’s Valuation, when the house carried a valuation of more than £23. The university’s property record states that the house no longer exists. Its history survives through directories and valuation documents rather than a standing building. [3]
A small community in the census
The published 1911 census tables identify Barna townland within Kilvellane parish. Its population had fallen from forty in 1901 to twenty-four in 1911. These are figures for the townland, rather than Newport or the wider parish. They provide a small-scale counterpart to the estate records, showing the modest community associated with the place at the beginning of the twentieth century. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Tipperary
- Barony
- Owney and Arra
- Civil parish
- Kilvellane
- Coordinates
- 52.71745, -8.41440 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1414502 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Barna. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Lee, Barna and Bettyville, estate 2244 · University of Galway, Landed Estates
- Barna House, property 4615 · University of Galway, Landed Estates
- Census of Ireland 1911, County Tipperary: Barna, Kilvellane · Census of Ireland, hosted by Central Statistics Office
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2012-02-13. How this page was prepared.