Townland
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A townland is a small geographical unit of land used in Ireland and Scotland, and believed to be of Gaelic or Goidelic origin. Townlands were often known as Baile (plural Bailte (Irish), Bailtean (Scottish Gaelic)), which is often anglicised as Bally in Ireland and Bal in Scotland, as in Balerno. In the Isle of Man, the prefix "Balley-" is fairly common in farm names.
Etymology
The name townland is derived from the Old English word 'tun', in turn originating from the Old Norse word tún, which describes a homestead, or settlement.Townlands in Ireland
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 term townland is a standardised form, often replacing earlier local terms such as tate (in Fermanagh and Monaghan), cartron (in Connacht) or ploughland. 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".
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 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.
Townlands in Scotland
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.Townlands in Scotland were often in contradistinction to kirktons (Clachan), which were settlements with a church, sometimes of ecclesiastical origin.
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