placenames.ie
Townland

Devenish

Daimhinis

The island’s surviving churches and tower represent several phases of building, distinct from the wider civil parish.

Recorded locationDevenish54.37363° N · 7.65856° WInteractive map supplied by OpenStreetMap.
Recorded place location · Logainm.ie

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

  • Daimhinis · Irish · main form · non-validated name
  • Devenish · English · main form
  • Devenish Island · English · main form

Place & story

Churches on the island

The Department for Communities dates Saint Molaise’s small church and the round tower to the twelfth century. The lower church began in the thirteenth century and was extended later. On higher ground, Saint Mary’s Augustinian Priory has surviving work dated from the middle fifteenth to the early sixteenth century, including a church, tower and small cloister. A carved fifteenth-century stone cross stands in the graveyard. [2]

Possible buried structures

In 2001 Harold Mytum reported geophysical and surface survey at the monastery by the Castell Henllys Field School. Magnetometer readings at half-metre intervals in the northern part of the site produced finer detail than the earlier one-metre zigzag survey. Several possible buildings or small enclosures were identified. These were survey interpretations, rather than excavated buildings with established plans or dates. [3]

Geographic information

Place type
Townland
County
Fermanagh
Civil parish
Devenish
Coordinates
54.37363, -7.65856
Mapped area
0.55 km²
Logainm ID
60361 ↗

People & family history

Census figures refer to the matched historical census area for each year. Boundaries and spellings can change over time.

1926 census

This year is outside the available dataset’s coverage. This does not indicate a population of zero.

Sources & further reading

  1. Logainm.ie — Devenish. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
  2. Devenish Ecclesiastical Site, FER211:021 · Department for Communities, Northern Ireland
  3. 2001:477 Devenish Monastery, Devenish Island; licence AE/01/39 · Harold Mytum, Department of Archaeology, University of York; Excavations.ie
  4. Boundary geometry retains its source attribution and licence in the downloadable geographic record. Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2023-02-08. How this page was prepared.