Inchavore ~ Inse Mhór

Lough Dan is a popular place to visit in Wicklow. You need to walk in, either from the Pier Gates on the Roundwood side or from the Military Road to the west. It occupies a large flat U shaped valley that once contained a great glacier. Entering Lough Dan from the west is a wide meandering river with classic ox bow formations. It may as well be an illustration in a school geography textbook.

Flanking this river is a wide grassy/ rushy plain. This is an Inch, a pretty common place name found along rivers in the eastern side of the country. It comes from the Irish word, Inse meaning simply a river meadow. Inse Mhór then is the Great or Large Inch and is anglicised here as Inchavore, Incha..vore. It pops up in many names as The Inch, Bob’s Inch, Inchafawdrig and so on. In the west of Ireland, a similar term would be a srath.

The Scoils, Scoyles is the steep rocky broken ground on the far side on the flanks of Cloghoge. As a name it’s found in a few places in Leinster for similar steep rough terrain and is likely related to the word scoilt, meaning split and referring here to fissured places.

#eastwestmapping #irishplacenames #mountaineeringireland