The Story of the Ashbourne Name

Ashbourne has an unusual place-name story because its modern English name is relatively recent, while its Irish name reaches back to an older settlement. Cill Dhéagláin means “Church of Déaglán,” traditionally referring to St Declan. The original settlement was known as Killegland or Kildeglan, names derived from the Irish.

The early settlement appears to have centred on a church and graveyard at what is now Killegland. Archaeological excavations have found evidence of an early Christian settlement there, suggesting that the religious community predates the modern town by many centuries.

The medieval settlement developed under Norman influence. Hugh de Lacy, who established the lordship of Meath after the Norman invasion, granted lands in the area to his followers. By the thirteenth century, Killegland had become an established settlement, and fortified houses were later built by the Wafre and Segrave families.

For centuries, however, the place was known as Killegland rather than Ashbourne.

The change came in the nineteenth century. Frederick Bourne, a wealthy road engineer and entrepreneur, acquired land in the area and developed a new village along the important coach road between Dublin and the north. He named the new settlement Ashbourne, combining the name of his family with his fondness for the ash tree.

The village grew around the coaching trade. Hotels, businesses, and houses appeared along the road, but the arrival of the railway age eventually changed the importance of the old coach routes.

Ashbourne later became associated with one of the most significant events of the Easter Rising of 1916. On April 28, the Fingal Volunteers, led by Thomas Ashe, attacked the Royal Irish Constabulary barracks in the town. A prolonged engagement followed at Rath Cross, where the Volunteers eventually forced the surrender of the police force and its reinforcements. It was one of the few substantial military engagements of the Rising outside Dublin and one of the rare rebel victories of Easter Week.

The modern town has grown enormously since then, becoming part of the wider Dublin commuter belt. Yet beneath the modern development remains the older Killegland settlement and its early Christian foundations.

Ashbourne therefore carries two names with two different stories.

Ashbourne belongs to the nineteenth-century road-building and commercial history of the town. Cill Dhéagláin reaches much farther back, to an early church and the medieval settlement that preceded the modern town.

Together, they tell the story of a place that has repeatedly been rebuilt while remaining rooted in the same ground.

Ashbourne is a modern name over an ancient foundation—a town where the old church of Déaglán still lies beneath the story of the new village.