The Story of the Kilrea Name

The Irish name Cill Ria is traditionally translated as “church on the hill.” Cill means “church,” while ria is understood locally as referring to the elevated ground on which the ancient church stood. The town takes its name from this early ecclesiastical site, near the present Church of Ireland on Church Street.

The story of Kilrea reaches back well before the modern town. Evidence discovered along the River Bann indicates that people lived in the area as far back as the Stone Age. Local tradition holds that St. Patrick passed through the area in the fifth century and identified a site for a church.

The church became the heart of the settlement, and Cill Ria preserves that memory. Kilrea is one of several medieval parish names in County Derry containing cill, the Irish word for church, a reminder of how thoroughly early Christianity shaped the Irish landscape.

For centuries, the area belonged to the Gaelic world of Ulster. That changed dramatically during the Plantation of Ulster in the early seventeenth century. In 1613, the lands around Kilrea were granted by King James I to the Worshipful Company of Mercers of London, who established a plantation settlement here.

The Mercers developed Kilrea as a planned market town. The distinctive Diamond at its center and the streets radiating from it still reflect the town's plantation-era layout. Their original headquarters were established at nearby Movanagher on the River Bann before Kilrea became the principal settlement of their lands.

The River Bann continued to shape Kilrea's fortunes. It provided transportation, supported fishing and milling, and formed the boundary between County Derry and County Antrim. The town consequently became an important agricultural and commercial center for the surrounding countryside.

By the nineteenth century, Kilrea was a thriving market town, with fairs and markets serving the surrounding farming communities. The town's plantation origins remained visible in its layout, while its older ecclesiastical identity survived in the name.

And that brings us back to the beginning:

Cill Ria — the church on the hill.

Long before the Mercers arrived, before the Diamond and the plantation streets, there was a church standing on the high ground above the Bann.

The name remembers it.

Kilrea is a beautiful example of an Irish place where two very different chapters of history remain visible side by side: the ancient Christian landscape preserved in its Irish name, and the seventeenth-century plantation town preserved in its streets.