placenamesDerrykeevan
Doire Chaomháin
A rare mud-walled cottage and a long-running service station preserve a history of local services on the Dungannon Road.
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
- Doire Chaomháin · Irish · main form · validated name
- Derrykeevan · English · main form
Place & story
A surviving vernacular house
The former Derrykevan Post Office occupies a mud-walled house built before 1835. Its hearth-lobby plan and roughly hewn roof timbers preserve older methods of domestic construction, with thatch protected beneath corrugated metal. The cottage sits below the modern road because successive resurfacing raised the carriageway. Unevenly spaced sash windows, a small porch and the surviving post-office sign distinguish a building listed for its architectural and social history in 2019. [2]
The Wright tenancy and post office
William Wright leased the property from Henry Stanley, a Portadown doctor, in the nineteenth century. Its valuation rose from £4 and fifteen shillings in 1863 to £5 in 1871. George Wright succeeded William in 1903 and bought the property in 1913 through the land-purchase legislation. The official heritage record documents postal use by at least 1907; fittings and the recess for a wall-mounted postbox survived after the office ceased operating in the cottage. [2]
From smithy to service station
The surrounding site developed a broader commercial life. In an interview published in April 2026, the Wright family traced a blacksmith’s shop on adjacent land to 1920 and their service station to the 1930s. Georgina, known as Ena, Wright founded the business, combining fuel sales with groceries, postal services, tyres and car accessories. A replacement shop opened in 2009, continuing a roadside service that had adapted from agricultural trade to motor traffic. [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Armagh
- Barony
- Oneilland West
- Civil parish
- Tartaraghan
- Coordinates
- 54.46133, -6.51943 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 56682 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Derrykeevan. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Former Derrykevan Post Office, HB14/01/104, surveyed2018 · Department for Communities, Northern Ireland
- Wright family service station history and expansion interview, 16 April2026 · Richard Burden / Armagh I
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2021-12-20. How this page was prepared.