Lurgancullenboy

Lurgancullenboy is a long narrow townland of 652 statute acres 2 roods and 35 perches about three miles east of Crossmaglen. It is bounded on the north by Dorsey, on the east by Carnally, on the south by Glassdrumman and Mounthill and on the west by Cornoonagh, Cregganbane and Cregganduff. In the Tithe Applotment Books of 1828 the area is recorded as 354 acres and 15 perches (Plantation Irish measure).

Name of townland

Lorg an Chuilinn Buí, "The track of the yellow holly" ⁽¹⁾.

There is no other townland of that name in Ireland.

Rev Simon Nelson, in his unpublished "History of the Parish of Creggan in counties Armagh and Louth 1611-1840" (PRONI - T541) has this to say about Lurgancullenboy-

"Toward the north of this parish the face of the country is generally uneven, ascending and descending into gentle undulatory hills and dales; these hills growing more elevated toward the center, where there are craggy and uncultivated rocks, rising two hundred feet above the level of the sea, forming a mountain called Lurgancullinboy which continues in an unbroken chain in an easterly direction to Slieve Gullion, the principal hiding place of the noted tory Redmond O'Hanlon.."

Ordnanace Survey Name Books: Creggan Parish ⁽²⁾

LURGANCULLENBOY (OSNB ii 3): There are two small lakes in the western side of the townland through which the boundary passes. The land is of a very inferior quality and the dwellings are generally very miserable. It is rented in small portions ...
It contains 652..2..35 of which 80..0..0 is uncultivated and Bog, & 5..2..32 water.

Valuation

Although the decimalisation of the currency was introduced only in 1971, all of the valuations in the following table have been converted from £sd for convenience.

Year	1837	1851	1864	1871	1881	1891	1901	1911	1926	1935	1952	1957	1974
Valuation	£259.53	£219.00	£293.95	£294.25	£280.50	£259.25	£259.25	£269.75	£260.50	£318.50	£318.25	£429.00	£470.00

The 1837 Townland Valuation recorded only houses worth £5 or more a year. There were no such houses in the townland.

Griffiths Valuation records the owner of the land as John J. Bigger.

Census of Ireland 1901

The 1901 Census enumerated 227 people in 56 households; a ratio of 4 people per household. The households occupied a total of 118 rooms; a ratio of 2.1 rooms per household and 1.9 people per room. Of the 56 households, three occupied 4 rooms, four occupied 3 rooms, 45 occupied 2 rooms and four had a single room. Thirty nine of the dwellings were were thatched.

Native Irish Speakers

Of the 56 households enumerated in the Census, 35 contained at least one native Irish speaker - 54 in all. Since theirs was the last generation to have been born into a substantially Irish speaking environment, their names, occupations and ages are recorded here. All were born in Co. Armagh, with the exception of Peter Murphy, born Co. Louth.

Population Decline

The following table sets out the number of houses and population enumerated in the townland in each of the 11 Censuses held between 1841 and 1951.

	1841	1851	1861	1871	1881	1891	1901	1911	1926	1937	1951
Houses	71	70	67	64	59	57	56	51	38	43	36
People	387	324	320	277	245	233	227	202	151	122	125
People per house	5.5	4.6	4.8	4.3	4.2	4.1	4.1	4.0	4.0	2.8	3.5

In the period of 110 years, the number of households halved and the population dropped by 68%. After the initial fall of 19% after the famine years, there was a steady decline until the 1930s when the position stabilised.

Names of House and Land Holders ⁽³⁾

The following table sets of the names of those who owned or rented houses and land on the townland at the time the valuation records or population censuses were compiled.