There are three townlands named Bellewstown in Co Meath, in the parishes of Trim, Rathaine and Duleek, respectively. Baile an Bheileogaigh is the official Irish name found in Gasitear na hEireann/ Gazetteer of Ireland - presumably for all three. So what is the gaelicised form of the surname Bellew?
In 1492 a killing took place i mbaile Risteard mic an Ridire belle, and John O'Donovan's translation of the Four Masters' Annala Rioghachta Eireann footnotes belle - "This is anglicised Bellew". Sean de Bhulbh's Sloinnte na hEireann/Irish Surnames (1997) follows Woulfe's Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall (1923) in giving Beilliu, and Mac Lysaght's The Surnames of Ireland (1980) gives none. This is a Norman toponymic de Belleau, and the family settled in Cos Louth and Meath soon after the Anglo-Norman invasion.
MacLysaght's More Irish Families lists Dr Dominic Bellew, Bishop of Killala from 1791 to 1812, and the Rev Paul Bellew, administrator of the diocese of Waterford from 1701 to 1735. Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) relates that Dillon Bellew had given 10 acres of land towards the support of a monastery of the order of St Francis in Mountbellew, the inmates of which superintended a national school. He also contributed towards the building and built a chapel at his own expense, "a very pretty structure with a tower 72 ft high".
However, Bellew associations with church institutions were not always so amicable. In Register of Wills and Inventories of the Diocese (1457-1483) we read: "John Bellewe and Jonet FitzWilliam, who happened to be related to one another in the third degree of affinity, had contracted matrimony, and lived as man and wife . . . An apostolic mandate was received . . . and in obedience to it, the parties were summoned before the archbishop (John Walton, 14721484), as delegate of the Apostolic See, who, on their humble entreaty, absolved them from the sentence of excommunication which their offence had brought on them, and pronounced sentence of separation or divorce." However, shortly after, they were granted a dispensation to remarry, thereby legalising their offspring.
In 1472 the same source lists John Bellewe as found in a Dublin inventory; in 1474 John Bellewe, St Michael's Lane, off High Street, is listed as having been one of the sheriffs of the city in 1469, and mayor in 1473, and Nicholas and John Bellewe were listed in Dublin documents.
In 1357 John Bellewe relinquished an eight-year tenure of the manor of Castleton near Dundalk, a carucate of land at le Hagard, and the rents in le Milton, Co Louth. Among those in receipt of payments in 1429, and sometime between 1431 and 1436 was John Bellewe, junior, knight, lately sheriff of Louth.
The Census of 1659 shows Bellews among the principal Irish names in the Co Louth baronies of Dundalk and Ardee, and as titula
does in Cos Meath, Roscommon, Offaly, Clare and Cork. In this latter county in the townlands of Kilmoa (Kilmore?) in the parishes of Templetrine the tituladoes were listed as Wm. Bellue, Esq, Lt John Bellue, Edmond Carny, Mary Bellue gent. John and William Bellew were Co Cork commissioners of the Poll-Money Ordinances of 1660 and 1661. Sir John Bellew, who was on the Supreme Council of the Confederate Catholics, was specially exempted from pardon in 1652, and three Bellews were among those transported to Connaught in 1654-58, receiving land in the baronies of Ballymoe, Bally nahinch and Killmaine. And though the Bellews did not conform like so many of their kind, they managed to retain possession of their land. This surname appears 14 times in King James's Irish Army List (1689).
By 1876 when Owners of Land of One Acre and Upwards was published, the Bellews of Mount Bellew had 10,516 acres in Co Galway, and 1,895 Co Roscommon acres. Mrs Grattan Bellew of the same address had 10,593 acres in Co Louth. Lord Bellew, Barmeath, Dunleer, had 5,109 acres in Co Louth. Barmeath Castle is still a Bellew residence, and the vast majority of the 48 Bellews in the current telephone directories are in Co Louth. There are 14 listed in the phone book of Northern Ireland. Barmeath is from Bearna Mhea, and the Irish for Mountbellew in the Co Galway parish of Moylough, is its older name of An Creagan, the rocky place.