Townland

A townland is the lowest-level geographical unit of land used in Ireland, smaller than a Parish or County. Townlands vary in size from as small as half an Acre (2,000 m˛) (Old Church Yard, near Carrickmore, County Tyrone) up to more than seven thousand acres (28 km˛) (Sheskin, in north-west County Mayo). 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. During the middle decades of the 19th century, an extensive series of maps of Ireland were created by the Ordnance Survey of Ireland for taxation purposes, which documented and standardised the boundaries of the more than 60,000 townlands in Ireland. 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). Historically, the townland name was used as the most important division in the Irish postal system; however this role has now been replaced in urban areas and in most areas of Northern Ireland by road names.

A useful source of information on townlands (with an emphasis on the north) 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.

A townland system of land division has been used also in Scotland, where boundaries were generally disregarded and lost during 19th century agricultural improvements. In Scotland townlands were called also fermlands and many names remain identifiable in farmstead names ending in Mains. Townland is derived from Old English tún 'manor' or (modern English 'town').