Project:Monasticon Hibernicum database/Townlands

There are over 60,000 townlands in Ireland today. While their historical importance is such that it will be useful to have all of them imported into the database at some stage in the future, it is also an utterly time-consuming process that should be left to some other occasion. For now, we will simply try to identify the townlands and towns we come across in MonHib and create new items for them in the database.

What we are working with

• Most of the items in the townlands column are townlands that still exist today.
• Unknown at this stage if any historical townlands are referred to.
• Some items, probably marked with a T at the end, are towns not townlands. For instance, 'Ahoghill T' refers to the town of Ahoghill, Co. Antrim.
• Not everything may be identifiable. Issues will be reported below.

Strategies

Identifying townlands is difficult and prone to error for a number of reasons:

• Some townland names are extremely common.
• Townlands may be found across more than one civil parish.
• Even if it were true that the territorial bounds of townlands have been stable since MonHib was compiled, the sources consulted may still represent earlier situations.
• Sources:
  • Logainm is our go-to source but does not offer a reconciliation service. It is also incomplete for Northern Ireland.
  • Wikidata is helpful in that it is rich in data and does offer a reconciliation service but there is no guarantee that the data are accurate and complete. Reconciliation itself is inadequate because we mostly rely on the descriptions, which often do not state the parishes or baronies that the townlands are in. E.g. "townland in Co. Antrim" is not enough to tell us that it is the townland of a given name we are looking for.

Issues

Antrim

• 'Fealough?' Co. Antrim
  • Maybe Farlough (wild guess)
• Ballywillin/Portrush, par. Ballywillin/Portrush
  • two adjacent townlands in par. Ballywillin as well as townland(s) in Portrush town?
• Galgorm: 'Galgorm (in Galgorm Park)'
  • must be Galgorm Parks. Some of the archaeological findings (standing stones D 0790 0370; cf. flat cemetery D 0698 0390) are described in The prehistoric burial sites of Northern Ireland.
• 'Drumnacur' (par. Ardclinis)
  • Careful now. One in par. Layd, one in par. Ardclinis, both in Glenarm Lower. I made sure Wikidata has both items.

towns or villages, not townlands

• Óentreb: 'Antrim' (townland) in 'Antrim' (parish)
  • Resolved as the town because there is no such townland. Note though that Logainm does not locate the town in the parish of that name.
• Armoy
  • Resolved as the cillage ('population centre') of that name