New developments with Irish administrative divisions - townlands, parishes etc..

Coolnabacky1873

There has been some new website developments lately so just wanted to put up a post summarizing it all.

For the longest time we only had the legendary SeanRuad townland database. Then Shane developed his website and gave use a townland index, with extra search functions. He also has a useful land division explanation page.

Recently John Grenham has updated his Irish Ancestors website, as outlined in a recent blog post. Also, the Irish Genealogical Research Society has recently launched a townland index too.

Any other such websites out there?

pinkypinky

Just to say that the IGRS townland index is the 1901 index. Seanruad's is from the 1851 version. So depending on which period you're looking for, you may need to refer to either or.

shanew

in conjunction with the above, the other two websites I find very helpful for checking locations are the Official Placename database which gives townland names in Irish, alternate names found for various dates etc, and also the OSI maps, particularly the 1st Edition (6" maps), on which it's easier to see the townland borders. You can scan around these checking for townlands and parish boundaries etc.

There's also an 1871 townland index on the EPPI website-dippam, and Histpop . Both are only in image format so there's no text search, but the details are in alphabetical order by townland name and you can browse by page. The 1871 listing includes the Electoral District (the original 1851 doesn't), which might be useful for tracking down the correct pre-1898 DED for checks of Valuation Books etc.

shanew

I've added another search method to the Townland Index data - a General Placename/Land Division search. This allows you to search for a placename when your source doesn't specify what type of location is included - e.g. an military attestation that could include the name of a town, townland, or civil parish etc.

Catholic parishes are not part of this, yet... I but might get to link these in at some stage

best way to demo is probably the screen-shots :