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When attempting to research your Irish ancestors,
you should first understand the system of Irish land
divisions.
The administrative divisions in Ireland consisted
of a variety of land units in descending order of
size: Province, County, Barony, Parish and Townland.
BARONY
Originally the landholding of a feudal baron, the
barony is now an obsolete administrative unit that
is mid-way in size between a county and a parish.
The system of bringing Irish local kingdoms into the
feudal system of baronies began in the medieval
period but did not extend to the whole of Ulster
until the early 17th century.
Large baronies were later subdivided until there
were 58 baronies in the area that comprises the
present day Northern Ireland.
Baronies of County Wicklow
- Lower Talbotstown
- Upper Talbotstown
- Rathdown
- Ballinacor North
- Ballinacor South
- Shillelagh
- Newcastle
- Arklow
COUNTY
A territorial unit equivalent to the English shire,
it was created by the English administration in
Ireland as the major subdivision of an Irish
province and dates from the 13th to the 17th
century. The counties as they are today were planned
in 1584 but many existed long before this date.
Antrim and Down had been counties from the 13th or
14th centuries but their modern boundaries were not
settled until 1605, while the modern boundary and
the new county name of Londonderry did not come into
existence until 1613 although it had existed from
Anglo-Norman times with different boundaries and
under the name of Coleraine.
PARISH
An ecclesiastical unit of territory that came into
existence in Ireland in its present form in the 12th
and 13th centuries and was continued by the
Established Church of Ireland after the Reformation.
It was then adopted as a civil administrative area
but over time the boundaries of some civil and
ecclesiastical parishes came to vary from each
other. Roman Catholic parishes, for example, when
re-instated, were often redrawn to suit the needs of
their parishioners. Because civil parishes may
extend across rivers that were often used to
delineate the boundaries of counties and baronies,
civil parishes can be in more than one county and in
more than one barony.
PROVINCE
This is the earliest and largest administrative
division in Ireland dating back into prehistory and
early historic times. There were originally five
Provinces in the island of Ireland with provincial
'overkings' who were supported by the kings of the
smaller local kingdoms within them. However, by the
17th century this had been reduced to the four
modern Provinces of Ulster, Connaught, Leinster and
Munster.
Present day Northern Ireland comprises six of the
nine counties established in the Province of Ulster
- the Ulster counties of Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan
lie in the Republic of Ireland.
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