“The Index to Townlands, the key to identifying all land divisions in Ireland, is for first time being made available online as a fully searchable database. …There are just over 64,000 townlands in Ireland. They are Ireland’s most basic – and ancient – land divisions, measuring from just a few acres to several hundred. From the mid-19th century, just before the period of the Great Hunger, Irish land divisions became standard through the introduction of the Poor Law System in 1838. Although the Poor Law was abandoned in the 1920s, the same system of land division is still in use to this day.”

“The new database can be use to to either locate a particular townland and the various land divisions it forms part of, or it can be used to identify the names of all townlands which fall into a given District Electoral Division or Civil Parish. Helpful links in the ‘Search Hints & Tips’ section also allow researchers to identify the locality on a set of maps dating from 1935 which denote the various boundaries of land divisions. In addition, Ordnance Survey Map numbers are noted.”