Place:Northern Ireland

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom that is variously described as a country, province, territory or region.^[1] Located in the northeast of the island of Ireland, Northern Ireland shares a border to the south and west with the Republic of Ireland. In 2011, its population was 1,810,863, constituting about 30% of the island's population and about 3% of the UK's population. The Northern Ireland Assembly (colloquially referred to as Stormont after its location), established by the Northern Ireland Act 1998, holds responsibility for a range of devolved policy matters, while other areas are reserved for the UK Government. Northern Ireland co-operates with the Republic of Ireland in several areas.

Northern Ireland was created in 1921, when Ireland was partitioned by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, creating a devolved government for the six northeastern counties. The majority of Northern Ireland's population were unionists, who wanted to remain within the United Kingdom. They were generally the Protestant descendants of colonists from Great Britain. Meanwhile, the majority in Southern Ireland (which became the Irish Free State in 1922), and a significant minority in Northern Ireland, were Irish nationalists and Catholics who wanted a united independent Ireland. Today, the former generally see themselves as British and the latter generally see themselves as Irish, while a Northern Irish or Ulster identity is claimed by a large minority from all backgrounds.

The creation of Northern Ireland was accompanied by violence both in defence of and against partition. During 1920–22, the capital Belfast saw major communal violence, mainly between Protestant unionist and Catholic nationalist civilians. More than 500 were killed and more than 10,000 became refugees, mostly Catholics. For the next fifty years, Northern Ireland had an unbroken series of Unionist Party governments. There was informal mutual segregation by both communities, and the Unionist governments were accused of discrimination against the Irish nationalist and Catholic minority. In the late 1960s, a campaign to end discrimination against Catholics and nationalists was opposed by loyalists, who saw it as a republican front. This unrest sparked the Troubles, a thirty-year conflict involving republican and loyalist paramilitaries and state forces, which claimed over 3,500 lives and injured 50,000 others. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement was a major step in the peace process, including paramilitary disarmament and security normalisation, although sectarianism and segregation remain major social problems, and sporadic violence has continued.

The economy of Northern Ireland was the most industrialised in Ireland at the time of Partition of Ireland, but declined, a decline exacerbated by the political and social turmoil of the Troubles. Its economy has grown significantly since the late 1990s. The initial growth came from the "peace dividend" and increased trade with the Republic of Ireland, continuing with a significant increase in tourism, investment and business from around the world. Unemployment in Northern Ireland peaked at 17.2% in 1986, dropping to 6.1% and down by 1.2 percentage points over the year, similar to the UK figure of 6.2%.

Cultural links between Northern Ireland, the rest of Ireland, and the rest of the UK are complex, with Northern Ireland sharing both the culture of Ireland and the culture of the United Kingdom. In many sports, the island of Ireland fields a single team, with the Northern Ireland national football team being an exception to this. Northern Ireland competes separately at the Commonwealth Games, and people from Northern Ireland may compete for either Great Britain or Ireland at the Olympic Games.

How places in Northern Ireland are organized

Northern Ireland was divided into six counties until 1973, when the counties were replaced by districts. The standard at WeRelate is to title Irish place pages according to their county, which is then broken down into parishes and then into townlands. When a townland is not known, villages, hamlets, cities and towns will be placed directly under the county they are located in. Pages for the modern districts have not yet been created.

In many cases, the hierarchy of places in Northern Ireland, as it appears here, does not represent the modern or current place names. The townlands that have been added, for instance, come from the names and locations that were in place according to when the 1851 census was taken. The IreAtlas Townland database has been used as a reference.

Explanation of divisions

The following terms are used to describe the type of settlement the particular place is. The NINIS defines terms based on statistical analysis. This is used merely as a guide as words such as "hamlet," "village," and "town" are used on WeRelate to give a general idea of the type of location without being exact as to population:

• Hamlet: Settlements of less than 1,000 people and having open countryside. See Northern Ireland Neighbourhood Information Service (NINIS)

• Village: Described by NINIS as having more than 1,000 people but less than 2,500.

• Settlement: An area having more than 2,500 people, but less than 4,500.

• Town: More than 4,500 people.

• Townland: Do not think of townlands as towns. "A townland is one of the smallest land divisions in Ireland. There are over 60,000 of them and they range in size from an acre or two up to many thousands of acres. The majority are in the hundreds of acres. Townlands have various origins, some bearing ancient Irish names while others were created after the coming of the Normans in 1169. The Gaelic names of the majority of these divisions would seem to indicate a pre-Norman date for their creation. In rural Ireland in particular, the townland names are of great importance, still forming the basis for administrative purposes. Given the common use of some surnames, families are often identified by the townland they live in." [Source: Guide To Irish Land Division]

• Parish: There are several different types of parishes in Ireland -- Catholic Parishes, Protestant parishes, Church of Ireland parishes and civil parishes. Since Griffith's Valuation used the civil parish, that is how the places have been arranged here.

• County: Northern Ireland is broken down into six counties that are all located in the Ulster Province and are part of the United Kingdom. They no longer serve any local administrative role in government.

• Province: "The oldest and largest land unit in Ireland is the Province, dating back into pre-history and early historic times. There were originally five Provinces in Ireland, with provincial ‘overkings’ who were supported by the kings of the smaller local kingdoms within. By the 17th century, the number of Provinces was reduced to four – Ulster in the north, Leinster in the east, Connaught in the west and Munster in the south." [See Main Administrative Land Divisions]

All places in Northern Ireland

• All places organized hierarchically
• All places organized alphabetically

Further information on historical place organization in Northern Ireland

• Statoids.com
• Wikipedia article on the counties of Ireland
• Guide To Irish Land Division
• Irish Townlands: Beyond the Definition
• Land units in Ireland
• Main Administrative Land Divisions

Maps

• Administrative Divisions of Ireland - Interactive Google map

Research Tips

• A quick guide to tracing your Ancestors in Northern Ireland
• The Irish Genealogy News blog reports that GRO Ireland has placed historical civil registers of birth, marriage and death on the free state-run IrishGenealogy.ie. The are some omissions of images and an embargo period. Read the details at www.irishgenealogynews.com/2016/09/irelands-historical-registers-of-birth.html/.