placenamesBoolteens
A crossroads village linked with neighbouring Keel through worship, schooling and an older parish burial ground.
The name
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
- Boolteens · English · main form
Place & story
The crossroads and the neighbouring service centre
Boolteens and Keel form a closely connected pair of settlements west of Castlemaine. The traditional commercial focus is the crossroads at Boolteens, while Keel provides the church, school and sports facilities. Dingle Peninsula Tourism draws attention to small survivals at the crossroads: the village pump, an old forge and a petrol pump. They give the place a history beyond its role on the road towards Inch. [2]
St Gobnait’s at the village edge
The parish dates St Gobnait’s Church to 1874 and places it in Keel at the edge of Boolteens. Its Gothic Revival design combines a cruciform plan with exposed sandstone walls, limestone window surrounds and red sandstone arches. The interior retains a carved marble altar and tabernacle, although the sanctuary has been remodelled. A burial ground surrounds the church, whose gateways belong to the same nineteenth-century building phase. [3] [4]
The older parish church at Keel
The old church and graveyard of Kilgarrylander lie farther southwest, at Keel rather than the Boolteens crossroads. A 2012 archaeological survey identified the surviving west gable and part of the south wall of the medieval church. It recorded 669 rough, uninscribed grave markers, alongside 98 named headstones. This large number of simple stones gives the burial ground a different character from a cemetery dominated by formal family plots. [5]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Kerry
- Barony
- Trughanacmy
- Civil parish
- Kilgarrylander
- Within
- Boolteens West
- Coordinates
- 0.00000, 0.00000
- Logainm ID
- 1417945 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Boolteens. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Boolteens / Keel · Dingle Peninsula Tourism Alliance
- St Gobnait, Keel, Castlemaine · Castlemaine Parish
- Saint Gobnait’s Catholic Church: record 21304711 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- Archaeological Survey, Keel, Boolteens, Castlemaine, Co. Kerry, October 2012 · Daire Dunne and Laurence Dunne Archaeology for Kerry County Council
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2015-01-28. How this page was prepared.