placenamesFordstown
Baile Forda
Fordstown’s local heritage marker records a short-lived but successful Gaelic football club and the long role of Bray’s Bar in village life.
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
- Baile Forda · Irish · main form · validated name
- Fordstown · English · main form
Place & story
Fordstown’s football years
The community’s heritage panel dates Fordstown’s Gaelic football club to 1947. It played at Carry’s field and won the junior championship in 1954, before reaching the intermediate final the following year. Johnny and Jimmy Meehan represented the club on Meath’s 1949 All-Ireland-winning team. The club disbanded in 1959. [2]
A stop between Kells and Athboy
The same panel recalls Bray’s Bar as a watering stop for horse-drawn carriages travelling between the Kells and Athboy railways. It identifies the Taaffes as the original owners and dates the first liquor licence to the 1850s. This account places the public house within the district’s nineteenth-century transport network. [2]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Meath
- Barony
- Kells Upper
- Civil parish
- Girley
- Coordinates
- 53.66564, -6.89549 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1414653 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Fordstown. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Girley / Fordstown: Meath Villages heritage marker, erected 2008 · Meath County Council and local heritage partners; inscription recorded by William Fischer Jr
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.