Carnaross

Carnaross or Carnaros (Irish: Carn na Ros) is a small town in County Meath, Ireland, some 4 km northwest of Kells on the R147 road between Kells and Virginia.

Carnaross was anciently called Bealaigh-duin, " the Road or Pass of the Fort"

Arriving at the exact derivation of a placename is often not possible. Where cairn appears in a place name the reference is to an ancient pagan burial site. It was customary to put a cairn or heap of stones over a grave. The custom was mostly abandoned with the arrival of Christianity. A cairn was still raised over suicides, the unbaptised and victims of war or fever who, for practical reasons, could not be brought to the churchyard. No passers-by would dare touch the cairn, and in some places a tree was planted instead of, or in addition to, the heap of stones. Evidence for just such a pagan burial site may exist nearby in a farmers field. Known as Keim the churchyard, it contains an ogham stone discovered in 2006 by someone digging a grave.

Carnaross, (detail from Larkin's Grand Jury Map, 1812)

In county Meath some of the places with cairn in their names are Rathcairn, Kilcairn, Cairnstown and Carnaross, to name but a few. Carnaross may have got its name from the Irish cairn. In P.W. Joyce's Irish Names of Places, (1913) vol. III, we find a reference to Carnaross which states that "the old people there say it is shortened from 'Carraig-na-ros', 'the rock of the woods', perhaps an ancient reference to this ogham stone just recently discovered.

There is evidence that Carnaross might be cathru na ros, Cathru could be translated as the quarter of the hills and not the quarter of the cairn. In ancient Ireland ceathru signified a quarter of a townland. The Normans introduced a similar-sounding word, cartron, (in French quarteron), for the same kind of division of land which was, according to Joyce, from 60 to 160 acres (0.65 km2). Cartronganny, near Mullingar, is the sandy cartron or the sandy quarter.

Ros is more difficult to interpret. It would not have been applied to any kind of hill, but rather to a promontory covered with trees or brushwood. In parts of Ireland the word is synonymous with wood, and a perfect example of the meaning of ros can be seen on the Donore road from Navan to Drogheda at Rosnaree. There is evidence that the valley of the Blackwater was thickly wooded in ancient times, and to the north of Castle Kieran is a locality named Cloghanrush, the stony place of the wood.

The parish of Carnaross is composed of the three mediaeval parishes of Castle Kieran, Loughan and Dulane. Carnaross is not even mentioned as a townland earlier than 1837, and even then John O'Donovan in the Ordnance Survey Field Name Books, refers to it as "a group of houses (two of them public houses) called Carnaross." It was, however, the site of a thatched chapel, (on the same site as the present church), and afterwards, when stage coaches came, it grew in importance and, because it was situated on the main Dublin-Enniskillen route, it soon boasted two inns. The townland of Loughan belonged to the Mapes of Maperath before the Cromwellian plantation; afterwards it was one of the many grants allotted to an officer named James Stopford. Dean Cogan mentions the holy well dedicated to Saint Anne. In describing Castle Kieran he notes: "Convenient to the termon cross, on the south side, there is a green grave marking the resting place of a priest, name now unknown, on which, at interments, the coffin is deposited, while the De Profundis is being intoned." In the Deanery of Kells Carnaross we can read : " In the Termann of Cenannas, in Meath, as the Oidheadh Breasail (the Massacre of Breasal, a tale so called) states (he was killed by) Diarmait, his father, and he was resuscitated by Becan. "

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