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
Crosa Caoil· Irish · main form · validated name
Crossakeel· English · main form
Place & story
A small post-town on the Oldcastle road
Samuel Lewis described Crossakeel in 1837 as a village of about sixty houses with 290 inhabitants. It stood on the road from Kells to Oldcastle and had a sub-post-office linked to Kells. Three annual fairs, a police station and fortnightly petty sessions made it a local service centre. A dispensary and a school supported by Erasmus Smith’s charity added medical and educational facilities to the village.[2]
Saint Schiria’s church
Saint Schiria’s Church of Ireland church was built in 1823. Its three-stage tower and stone spire remain prominent features, framed by battlements and pinnacles. Pointed windows and limestone dressings give the building its Gothic character. The church lost its roof and survives as a ruin within its graveyard, approached through cast-iron gates. The national architectural inventory records the surviving stonework as an accomplished example of nineteenth-century church architecture.[3]
Turning the open alley into an indoor court
Crossakiel’s handball club re-formed in 1980 and won its first county title in the sixty-by-thirty code in 1985, when Kevin Reilly and Ollie Gaughran took the novice doubles championship. Work to enclose the open alley began that November. Fundraising and a local committee brought the project to completion, and Irish Handball president Tommy O’Brien officially opened the indoor court in 1986. The new building provided a permanent enclosed setting for a sport already established in village life.[4]
Both counts use the 2016 settlement boundary, allowing like-for-like comparison. CSO supplies the 2022 count on this older boundary for comparison only. The official 2022 Built Up Area has different boundaries.
View population figures
Crossakeel — Census 2016 settlement footprint — census population
These figures use different area definitions. Read the boundary note before comparing them.
Crossakeel, Meath
Published census settlement populations
181people · 2016
Settlement boundaries changed during this period. Differences may reflect boundary changes as well as population change. Where a 2011 legal-town-and-environs count is shown, it has not been recalculated onto the 2016 settlement boundary.
placenames