The townland is the foundation of land division in Ireland, so the starting point for many searches. The standard work of reference for searches is a book published in 1861 with the title "General Alphabetical Index to the Townlands and Towns, Parishes & Baronies of Ireland", which was printed by Alexander Thom & Co. of Dublin, " for her Majesty's Stationery Office". Thom's printed many of the official government publications.

This Townland Index book includes a list of the townlands and towns, their size in acres, along with their names of the associated civil parishes, baronies, Poor Law Unions and Counties based on the data available at the time from 1851 census returns and statistics extracted from the returns.

The original transcript of the Index was carried out by John Broderick aka 'SeanRuad', and an improved version is included below, which some corrections of typos, and incorrectly assigned Poor Law unions etc..

The links below allow for several different types of searches, including two separate 'Sounds Like' functions, advanced wildcard and group-by search modes and a 'browse' mode to show lists of townlands included in a Poor Law Union, Barony or Civil Parish.

Further help and brief examples are included on each of the search pages.


Townland database Search by townland name, using part names, wildcards, soundex
 For wildcard option use . (full stop) to search for a single unknown letter, and * for one or more letters.
Advanced Townland Search Search Townlands, Parishes, Baronies and Poor Law Unions using wildcards.
 Use . (full stop) to search for a single unknown letter, and * for one or more letters.
Townland explorer Browse the Townland data by county, Poor Law Union, Barony and Civil parish.
 
New Townland explorer Revised version of the townland explorer (Beta).
 
Placename Search Placename and Land Division Search.
 Find Towns, Townlands, Civil Parishes, Baronies and Poor Law Unions using a single search. Shows combined list of placenames matching search terms, and also displays further division details for results.