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
Cé na Cille Móire· Irish · main form · validated name
Kilmore Quay· English · main form
Place & story
A house turned across the road
An Teach Oileán, in Crossfarnogue, illustrates the village’s vernacular building tradition. The architectural inventory records the house as already standing in 1840, with a lobby entrance sheltered by a gabled windbreak. It sits perpendicular to the road, beneath an oat-thatched roof. Its battered walls suggest the use of local materials, including possible mud construction. A break in the masonry reveals later extension along the building’s length. These details show how an apparently simple cottage developed through successive alterations.[2]
Modern homes and an old streetscape
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 10 January 1975 recorded concern about the future of Kilmore Quay’s thatched houses. Families from seven older homes were moving to a new twenty-eight-house development. Residents welcomed modern amenities, while others feared empty houses would deteriorate without maintenance. The report captures a practical tension behind the familiar whitewashed streetscape: preserving traditional buildings also depended on whether they could continue to provide satisfactory homes.[3]
A lifeboat service with an interruption
The RNLI supplied Kilmore with a lifeboat in 1847, following an application the previous year. Its station history records a subsequent lapse, with the early boat requiring repairs and no services documented for it. A boathouse was constructed in 1884. The history also remembers the December 1957 rescue of ten men from the French trawler Augusta Maurice, for which Coxswain Mark Bates received a silver medal. This record distinguishes the station’s early beginnings from the later continuity of organised rescue work.[4]
People & connections
Brian Kehoe’s fifty years afloat
Brian Kehoe retired as Kilmore Quay’s station mechanic at the end of 2019 after more than fifty years with the RNLI, divided between voluntary service and employment. His final exercise brought together crews from neighbouring stations, Kilmore Quay Coast Guard and the rescue helicopter. Villagers and family gathered at the harbour afterwards. The RNLI’s account places an individual working life within the wider network of coastal services on which rescues depend.[5]
The Burrow beside the village
Nearby Ballyteigue Burrow Nature Reserve was established in 1987. Its combination of dunes, dune hollows, mudflats and saltmarsh supports specialised plants and wintering birds. The National Parks and Wildlife Service identifies wild asparagus among its protected plants and describes the estuary behind the dunes as a feeding area for waders. The coast beside the harbour is therefore also a landscape of changing sand, tidal ground and habitats that differ markedly over a short distance.[6]
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
Kilmore Quay — Census 2016 settlement footprint — census population
Kilmore Quay, Wexford — Census town, CSO 2006 report
2002–2006: census town
396people · 2006
These are the historical areas published in the 2006 census report. Boundaries may differ between censuses and from modern settlements. Legal towns, environs and suburbs are shown separately; none has been combined into a modern settlement total.
View population figures
Kilmore Quay, Wexford — Census town, CSO 2006 report — census population
Kilmore Quay, Wexford — Census town, CSO 1996 report
1991–1996: census town
406people · 1996
These are the historical areas published in the 1996 census report. Boundaries may differ between censuses and from modern settlements. Legal towns, environs and suburbs are shown separately; none has been combined into a modern settlement total.
View population figures
Kilmore Quay, Wexford — Census town, CSO 1996 report — census population
Kilmore Quay, Wexford — Census town, CSO 1986 report
1981–1986: census town
458people · 1986
Figures cover the historical town area printed in the 1986 report. Boundaries may have changed between censuses. Legal town, environs and suburb totals remain separate and differ from modern settlement boundaries.
View population figures
Kilmore Quay, Wexford — Census town, CSO 1986 report — census population
These figures use different area definitions. Read the boundary note before comparing them.
Kilmore Quay, Wexford
Published census settlement populations
372people · 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