Irish Family History

Those of us living in Ireland often forget that the townland is a uniquely Irish division of land.  One of the first questions researchers living elsewhere ask is what exactly is meant by ‘townland.’

A brief description of all of Ireland’s land divisions is a useful starting point.  The island of Ireland is divided into thirty-two counties, each of which falls into one of four provinces: Connacht, Leinster, Munster and Ulster.  

From an historical perspective, the next important division of land is the barony.  This division pre-dates counties, being based on the territories of Gaelic families.  As a result it has no correspondence with county boundaries.   However, it is useful as a researcher to understand which barony a given townland falls within.

Baronies are largely divided into civil parishes.  For historical reasons they normally correspond to Church of Ireland parishes.  Roman Catholic parishes very often have different boundaries.  (Churches group parishes into dioceses).

Civil parishes are broken down into townlands which are the smallest administrative divisions within Ireland. It has been estimated that there are approximately 64,000 townlands in Ireland. Townlands pre-date both counties and parishes, and are often named after the features in the landscape, buildings or people. For instance, in the Barony of Iffa and Offa East in Co. Tipperary there are townlands named Giantsgrave, Horsepasture, Walshsbog and Ballypatrick (‘Bally-’ being an Anglicisation of the Irish ‘Baile’ meaning ‘town’ or ‘townland’).

You can find out which townlands exist for a given barony or parish by referring to the IreAtlas Townlands Database which was created by the late John Broderick (SeanRuad), and is now hosted on the Leitrim-Roscommon genealogy site.

Further divisions that you will come across during your research are Poor Law Unions, groupings created for the distribution of poor relief, and Electoral Divisions which were introduced as voting became more widespread.