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Townland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A townland is a small geographical unit of land used in Ireland and Scotland, and believed to be of Gaelic origin.
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The English term townland is derived from the Old English word 'tun', in turn originating from the Old Norse word tún, which describes a homestead, or settlement. The English language term was used by administrators to translate various Gaelic land measures.
The official term for 'townland' in Irish is baile fearainn (plural bailte fearainn); baile is the word for 'town' and fearann is 'land, territory, quarter', from a Proto-Indo-European root *wer- which is also related to the English word ware, a valuable commodity. (In Scottish Gaelic, the plural of the word baile is bailtean.) In the Isle of Man, the prefix "Balley-" is fairly common in farm names; the Manx for 'townland' is balley eirinagh, pl. baljyn eirinagh.
In Ireland, a townland is the lowest-level officially-defined geographical unit of land, smaller than a parish, barony or county. Townlands vary in size from as small as half an acre (2,000 m²) (Old Church Yard, near Carrickmore, County Tyrone) up to more than seven thousand acres (28 km²) (Sheskin, in north-west County Mayo).
The earliest reference to townlands as a unit are in 11th century pre-Norman legal documents referring to grants of bailte to monasteries. The term baile has a variety of related meanings in Irish, such as "home" (the basic meaning), "village" (sráid-bhaile, literally "street-town", or "town" (baile mór, literally "big town"). In the context of placenames, the most accurate translation might be "the land belonging to a particular home or farmstead". The modern Irish for townland is baile fearainn, literally "a home of land".
The term townland is a standardised form, often replacing earlier local terms such as tate (in Fermanagh and Monaghan), cartron (in Connacht) or ploughland. These terms represent a variety of native land divisions, varying in name from one part of the country to another, and forming a hierarchy of sizes.
The nineteenth-century surveyor Thomas Larcom, who was the first Director of the Irish Ordnance Survey, summarised the hierarchy as follows:
10 acres - 1 Gneeve; 2 Gneeves - 1 Sessiagh; 3 Sessiaghs - 1 Tate or Ballyboe; 2 Ballyboes - 1 Ploughland, Seisreagh or Carrow; 4 Ploughlands - 1 Ballybetagh, or Townland; 30 Ballybetaghs - Triocha Céad or Barony.
(A complicating factor was that in Gaelic times, land was measured in terms of its economic potential rather than in fixed units of measurement: by the number of cattle that an area of pasture land could support, or by the time taken to plough an area of arable land. Therefore the size of an "acre" in this system could vary enormously depending on the quality of the land.)
Townlands were first named and their boundaries defined under the English legal system during the process of plantation. The unit from the hierarchy of land divisions that was chosen to represent a "townland", however, might vary from county to county; in Fermanagh and Monaghan, the tate was chosen, resulting in relatively small townlands, while in other areas, larger units such as ploughlands were chosen, resulting in larger townland units.
As explained previously, townland size was often determined by the fertility of the land, thus townlands in high quality land tended to be smaller, while townlands in mountainous or bog areas tended to be much larger in size. In many areas of Norman settlement, townland boundaries tend to follow field or individual property boundaries and may reflect the holdings of monasteries or churches or the boundaries of commonage. In these areas, townlands often have apparently irregular boundaries and are of small size. In contrast, townlands in areas of traditional Gaelic settlement tend to be larger in area and usually have apparently regular boundaries determined by streams, rivers or roads.
During the middle decades of the 19th century, an extensive series of maps of Ireland were created by the Irish division of the Ordnance Survey for taxation purposes, which documented and standardised the boundaries of the more than 60,000 townlands in Ireland. This process often involved dividing or amalgamating existing townlands, and defining townland boundaries in areas such as mountain or bog land that had previously been outside the townland system.
Townlands form the building blocks for higher-level administrative units such as parishes and District Electoral Divisions (in the Republic of Ireland) or wards (in Northern Ireland). The townland name continues to be one of the more important divisions in the Irish postal system; although this role has now been replaced in urban areas and in most areas of Northern Ireland by road names. The Northern Ireland Assembly passed a motion in 2001 requesting all Government departments in Northern Ireland to make use of townland addresses in their correspondence and publications.
A useful source of information on townlands (with an emphasis on the northern parts of Ireland) is the Federation for Ulster Local Studies. Its publications include Every Stony Acre Has a Name: Celebration of the Townland in Ulster by Tony Canavan, and Townlands in Ulster: Local History Studies, edited by W.H. Crawford & R.H. Foy.
In Scotland, townland boundaries were generally disregarded and lost during 19th century agricultural improvements. Townlands were called also fermlands and many names remain identifiable in farmstead names which include the word Mains, and "Bal-" (Baile) in placenames, such as Balerno or Balmoral.
Townlands in Scotland were often in contradistinction to kirktouns (Clachan), which were settlements with a church, sometimes of ecclesiastical origin.
See also Township (Scotland) for the crofting context.
There may be similarities between the notion of townlands in Ireland and the traditional land divisions of treens (c.f. the Irish word trian, a third part) in the Isle of Man. Treens are subdivided into smaller units called quarterlands[1].
- Discussion of traditional Gaelic units of land measurement
- Celebrating Ulster's Townlands Exhibition (Ulster Placename Society)
- Searchable database of townlands in Ireland derived from the Index to the 1851 Census of Ireland
- Set of Excel spreadsheets, listing all townlands in the Republic of Ireland and the 1898 District Electoral Division they belong to.
- Lists of townlands by county in Northern Ireland
- POINTER address database in Northern Ireland
- Mayo County Library list of townlands by parish with maps and other details