placenamesCappagh
An Cheapach
The Tyrone parish’s nineteenth-century record combines household industry with estate planting and successive building works.
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
- An Cheapach · Irish · main form
- Cappagh · English · main form
Place & story
Farming alongside linen work
Samuel Lewis's 1837 description of Cappagh includes Mountfield district and records a parish extending across mountain, reclaimed bog and better agricultural land. Its inhabitants combined farming with flax spinning and linen weaving. Bessy Bell, Mary Gray and Mullaghcairn supplied upland grazing, while cultivated fields occupied a smaller share of the territory. The account presents household manufacture and pastoral land as integral parts of the parish economy. [2]
Planting and settlement improvements
Lewis traced planting at the Rash demesne, subsequently called Mountjoy Forest, to Lord Mountjoy's work beginning in 1780. He also associated Sir William McMahon with extensive plantations at Facary and the laying out of Mountfield as a town intended to hold markets and fairs. A newly opened road directly connecting Omagh towards Belfast added another improvement to the parish's landscape by the time of his survey. [2]
Work on Cappagh’s parish church
The Irish Architectural Archive records several generations of work on Cappagh's Church of Ireland building. Repairs were advertised in 1861, and later alterations introduced a polygonal apse and new seating. A further programme in 1917 provided a new roof, marble steps in the chancel, repointing and a sexton's house. These documented projects show the church changing through repair and adaptation rather than surviving as a wholly untouched eighteenth-century building. [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Civil parish
- County
- Tyrone
- Barony
- Strabane Upper
- Barony
- Omagh East
- Coordinates
- 54.63561, -7.28561 (approximate)
- Mapped area
- 136.53 km²
- Logainm ID
- 63176 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Cappagh. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Cappagh, A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, 1837 · Samuel Lewis, Library Ireland transcription reproduced by A Vision of Britain
- County Tyrone, Cappagh, Church of Ireland, work record 15496 · Irish Architectural Archive, Dictionary of Irish Architects
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2008-01-29. How this page was prepared.