placenamesBallybeg
An Baile Beag
Ballybeg in County Meath combines a nineteenth-century horticultural enterprise with a former railway stop and an emigrant’s career in Tasmania.
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 Beag · Irish · main form · validated name
- Ballybeg · English · main form
Place & story
A nursery employing eighty people
Ballybeg supported a substantial horticultural business before the railway arrived. In 1837 Samuel Lewis described it as the seat of T. O’Reilly and recorded a nursery covering one hundred statute acres, employing about eighty people. This was a sizeable concentration of work within Rathboyne parish, whose wider landscape Lewis described as divided almost equally between grassland and tillage. The nursery made the estate an employer as well as a country residence. [2]
The former railway station
Ballybeg was a small station on the Great Northern Railway route linking Drogheda, Navan and Oldcastle, the first stop west of Navan. Its single platform and modest brick station building reflect its rural scale. The Eiretrains photographic survey records a surviving wooden Great Northern waiting room and level-crossing gates, with the station building converted into a private residence. Passenger services on the branch ended in 1958, leaving these structures as reminders of the area’s railway connection. [3]
Christopher O’Reilly in Tasmania
Christopher O’Reilly was born at Ballybeg in 1835, the youngest son of Terence O’Reilly and Anna Blundell. He emigrated to Victoria in 1854 and subsequently settled in Tasmania, where he farmed and worked as a mining engineer. Elected to the Tasmanian parliament for Kingborough in 1871, he later served as commissioner for works and crown lands. Railway development occupied much of his political career, including proposals for lines serving the island’s northern districts. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Meath
- Barony
- Kells Upper
- Civil parish
- Balrathboyne
- Coordinates
- 53.68288, -6.81935 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1414631 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Ballybeg. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Rathboyne, A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, 1837 · Samuel Lewis
- Ballybeg railway station photographic survey · Eiretrains
- O’Reilly, Christopher (1835–1910) · Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian National University, Volume 5, 1974
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.