placenamesMaddan
Na Madain
St Joseph’s Primary School preserves an account of the earlier Madden Public Elementary School and its place in village life.
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
- Na Madain · Irish · main form · validated name
- Maddan · English · main form
Place & story
Learning and gathering
According to St Joseph’s own school history, Madden Public Elementary School opened around 1895 with two classrooms and approximately 50 to 60 pupils. Open fires provided the heat. Children could remain until the age of fourteen or fifteen before continuing their education in Armagh or Keady. [2]
Facilities were modest: the road between school and chapel wall served as the play space, and there were no indoor toilets. The rooms also had a community purpose beyond lessons. At the end of the school day, furniture was moved aside so that the building could serve as the local dance hall. [2]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Armagh
- Barony
- Armagh
- Civil parish
- Derrynoose
- Coordinates
- 54.27531, -6.75642 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 56133 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Maddan. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- History: Madden Public Elementary School · St Joseph’s Primary School, Madden
- The former church hall and school on Maddan Road, as photographed in August 2013 illustration: based on a Former church hall and school, Maddan by Kenneth Allen. AI-assisted watercolour and ink adaptation; cream paper margins added, incidental clutter omitted and fine details simplified. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2021-12-20. How this page was prepared.