Townland Boundaries
As many here will know we have a dense network of some 60,000 townlands on the island of Ireland. Townlands have little enough relevance now in urban areas but in rural parts they have served as addresses and as a sense of locality down the years. It’s often stated that townlands are ancient divisions that go back to the days of Gaelic Ireland. Some likely do in a general sense but many were also creations of the 19th century when it was decided to map and value all the townlands on a systematic basis.
The job of identifying the townlands, their names, boundaries & valuation fell to the organisational hand of Richard Griffith and his Boundary Survey. Faced with such a monumental task his starting point had to be with what was accepted already by the county juries and larger estates. But there were many areas where no formal understanding of townlands and their boundaries existed, typically on rough mountain and coastal lands. Here the boundary surveyors simply created townlands and boundaries, likely in conjunction with the larger landowners of the region. Natural features were chosen where available as in streams but across open land they had mearings and lock spot lines dug by local labourers. Two hundred years later, you can still see remains of these man made features on the hills today.
They normally chose to run their new boundaries along spurs and ridges where available but occasionally there are crazy boundaries. These improbable straight lines in the Slieve Snaght area of Derryveagh in Donegal plunge across huge cliffs and must surely have been the product of a paper office solution rather than anything decided on the ground. Neither could it have been possible for the poor sappers of the Ordnance Survey to actually measures these particular lines with their chains. Alternatively they represent a cock up where the surveyors didn’t understood where the bounds were supposed to be and just made them up. And of their relevance now, well they define the boundary of the Glenveagh National Park, one side private commonage and the other national park.
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