In researching your family history in Northern Ireland it is very important to have an understanding of the administrative divisions which exist or have existed in the past. The main divisions of interest to the family historian are described below.

County

The county was introduced to bring a uniform administrative system to the country as a means of extending common law and reducing the autonomous power of both the Gaelic and Anglo-Norman families. During the seventeenth century it was used as the main administrative unit when the framework was laid for the Plantation of Ulster. It is still used today. There are six counties in Northern Ireland:

Antrim Armagh Down Fermanagh Londonderry Tyrone

Barony

The barony is a sub-division of a county. It can occupy part of two counties, in which case it is known as a half-barony in each. It was used from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries but after the reorganisation of local government in 1898 it diminished in significance as an important territorial division.

Townland

The townland is the smallest administrative division in the country and therefore of particular importance to the family historian. Despite their name they do not contain towns. There are approximately 62,000 townlands in Ireland with great variations in shapes and sizes due to the fact that they are related to local topography and farming practices. Because of their intimacy, people identified closely with their townland or village and they are often the most specific address available for rural dwellers.

Poor Law Union

This consists of a number of townlands within a radius of about 10 miles of a market town and was introduced in the Poor Law Act of 1838. A workhouse was built in each market town and was financed by a rate collected under the Poor Law Valuation.

General Registrar’s District

These are the areas within which births, marriages and deaths were collected and are generally named from a large town within them. Registration essentially arose out of the Victorian public health system which was based on the Poor Law and the districts are sub-divisions of the Poor Law Unions. The Superintendant Registrar’s District is synonymous with the Poor Law Union.

Parish

The parish is an ecclesiastical administrative division and since the Reformation, the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church have each had separate parochial structures.

The Church of Ireland retained the medieval parochial divisions and the civil parishes used in early censuses, tax records and maps are almost identical to the Church of Ireland parishes.

As a result of the confiscation of its buildings and land during the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church's parishes are larger and more unwieldy. The creation of new Roman Catholic parishes in the nineteenth century means that registers relevant to a particular area may be split between two parishes.

Diocese

The parishes of both the Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland are organised into dioceses, each presided over by a bishop. Church of Ireland dioceses are important for record purposes such as the administration of wills.

Cities, Towns and Boroughs

Many towns have several parishes while some parishes have several towns. A ward is an administrative unit within a city or large town.

Indexes

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland has a very useful online geographical index. To access it click here. The Alphabetical Index to the Towns and Townlands of Ireland (Dublin: Alexander Thom and Company, 1877) is an alphabetic list of townlands giving which parish, barony, county and Poor Law Union they belong to. The General Alphabetical Index to the Townlands and Towns, Parishes and Baronies of Ireland 1851 (reprinted by the Genealogical Publishing Company Inc, Baltimore 1984) is based on the 1851 census and gives similar information. The Topographical Dictionary of Ireland by Samuel Lewis (1837) lists all the parishes, baronies, towns, villages and counties in Ireland with some local information including an account of agriculture and industry and the major local houses (“seats”) and their owners. Similar information is provided in the Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland (Fullerton and Company, 1846).