Ballinamore

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Ballinamore
Béal an Átha Móir

Location

WGS-84 (GPS) Coordinates:
54.05° N 7.8° W

Irish Grid Reference
H131112

Statistics

74 m

Population (2002)
- Town:
- Rural:

687
997

Ballinamore (Irish: Béal an Átha Móir) is a small town in County Leitrim Lying 15 miles with the border of Northern Ireland. It is known through its Gaelic interpretation as the ‘mouth of the big ford’. This is because it was the main crossing point of the Yellow River that runs through the bottom of the town. This waterway become known as the Ballinamore-Ballyconnell canal, built to link the Rivers Erne and Shannon in the 1840s and recently changed again to the Shannon-Erne Waterway.

Ballinamore Main Street-High Street-August 2006

The history of Ballinamore has enabled it to grow through the centuries as a town with a large variety of trades and tradesmen. In the 18th Century, settlers from County Down were dispossessed by landowners travelled to the west of Ireland looking for new habitats. They stopped in an area of land they found suitable notably for its location near the rivers Shannon and Erne. This was the origins of Ballinamore. These dispossessed people brought with them numerous skills such as blacksmiths, tinsmiths, skilled craftsmen and farmers. This abundance of skills became a distinctive feature of the town through the 19th and 20th Centuries.