Why do property deeds refer to parishes?

Thoie

Just looking at a property, erm, document/thing/assignment(? ) and I notice that it says:

"ALL THAT AND THOSE part of the lands of xx situate at yy in the Parish of zz being part of the lands...."

It looks like this is dated in 2002. I've seen it in other places as well. Any particular reason why the name of the parish is still included in these kinds of documents?

For example, I know there's a Stradbally in multiple counties in Ireland, but surely the county name would be enough to distinguish the location, without including the parish?

Grolschevik

Much of the description of property, boundaries, location, etc is reproduced from earlier leases. Continuity of description aids in tracing title back in time.

4ensic15

The usual formula is townland or street, parish, barony and county. parishes of the same name will be in different baronies. Civil parishes have traditionally been important administrative units. Births, marriages and deaths were traditionally registered by parish. Pub licences were restricted by parish and so on. It is of less significance now with registered land and mapping.

Victor

Note that these are civil parishes (which once upon a time lined up with Church of Ireland parishes), not religious parishes. See www.townlands.ie and http://dev3.openstreetmap.ie/osm/slippymap.html?zoom=7&lat=53.5&lon=-6&layers=B00FFFFFFF

In some jurisdictions, e.g. Louisiana, 'parishes' are the equivalent of counties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parishes_in_Louisiana

Peregrinus

Ireland is divided into counties; counties are divided into baronies; baronies are divided into parishes; parishes (except in historically urban areas) are divided into townlands. Large-scale O.S. maps still show barony, parish and townland boundaries. The boundaries often (but not always) follow physical features (e.g. watersheds, watercourses) or they are marked by, e.g, hedges or ditches.

For conveyancing purposes unregistered non-urban property was (and still is) identified by barony, parish and townland. This is a more certain locator than street names and numbers since streets can be renamed or realigned, street numbering schemes can change, etc, etc.

As others have said, these are civil parishes. They would at one time have aligned with ecclesiastical parishes, but not any more.

Samuel T. Cogley

I can't work out whether this is incredibly interesting or I'm incredibly dull.

GM228

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

I can't work out whether this is incredibly interesting or I'm incredibly dull.

Well it's got my interest, perhaps something next for me to research if I ever get done with equity

nuac

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

I can't work out whether this is incredibly interesting or I'm incredibly dull.

Fite fuaite with the history of an area

Fred Swanson

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ohnonotgmail

Fred Swanson wrote: »

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except in this case the church is the CofI.

Peregrinus

Fred Swanson wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Not really. Parish boundaries were set by custom and tradition and, while the bishop could vary them, the bishop was appointed by the king.

This goes back to a time when church and state were closely intertwined, but that certainly didn't mean that the church rules supreme; the state won most of the battles.

Peregrinus

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

except in this case the church is the CofI.

Again, not really. The Catholic church was the established church at the time when parish boundaries were set.

gctest50

They should put GPS coordinates on them now one by one as they are being handled

Bit less of that last century "over the road to where the black cow is sometimes....no no wait " stuff

ohnonotgmail

Peregrinus wrote: »

Again, not really. The Catholic church was the established church at the time when parish boundaries were set.

what timeframe are we talking about here?

Peregrinus

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

what timeframe are we talking about here?

Up until about the 12th century, the Irish church - unusually - was not organised with a diocesan/parish structure; instead it was organised around monasteries. There were bishops in some of the Viking (or formerly Viking) towns like Dublin, Limerick, Waterford, etc, but most of the country was served by monastic clergy assigned by local and regional abbots.

This changes with the Synod of Rathbreasail, which established a system of territorial dioceses, divided into territorial parishes. The boundaries of the dioceses roughly corresponded to political boundaries of the time, between the various local kindgoms.

A further synod (Kells, 1152) "tweaked" the system by merging one or two of the smaller dioceses, and by incorporating the dioceses of Dublin and Waterford (which already existed, but which up to that point were regarded as being part of the English church, subordinate to Canterbury).

My guess is that it took a couple of centuries for the system of parishes to be fully rolled out, and boundaries established, but the process was certainly complete well before the Reformation.

The result is that when the Reformation came along, the Church of Irleland and the Catholic Church were both operating off the same networkd of dioceses and parishes, and the parishes were also the civil parishes.

This state of affairs continued up until the nineteenth century (although as far as the Catholics were concerned for most of the penal times the parish structure was pretty nominal; many parishes existed on paper but no appointments were made to them). In the nineteenth century the Catholic church reestablished itself on the ground in Ireland, and this involved a lot of merging, dividing, realigning etc of parishes to create a network that would align with population settlement. Meanwhile the Church of Ireland, especially after disestablishment in 1871, was also reorganising its parishes, opening up a few new ones to take account of growing suburbs, but most merghing, or uniting rural parishes with low Anglican populations.

The end result is that the two churches have ended up with quite different parochial structures, while the civil authorities are working off a parochial structure that used to be the ecclesiastical structure.

This has happened because parishes matter more to the churches than they do to the state. Parishes really are functioning organisations with staff, property, facilities for congregants, etc, and so they have to conform to the socio-economic geographical realities. But the state is organised through counties, cities, town commissions, urban districts, rural districts, electoral divisions and so forth. Parishes (and townlands) exist for civil purposes mainly to act as a locator for land, and from that point of view it's a positive advantage to have a system of territorial boundaries that never changes.

Peregrinus

gctest50 wrote: »

They should put GPS coordinates on them now one by one as they are being handled

They do. As land is brought into the land registry system, its boundaries are defined by reference to Land Registry maps, which are prepared by the Ordnance Survey. The person applying to bring a property into the land registry system has to prepare a map which, when approved, will be incorporated into the Land Registry mapping system, and those maps have to use the ITM ("Irish Transverse Mercator") co-ordinates, which is the standard geographic co-ordinate system for Ireland, and the one used by the Irish Institute of Surveyors.

The land registry maps aren't absolutely definitive; it's still possible to raise a boundary dispute by arguing that the land registry maps incorrectly record the boundary (i.e. that an error was made when the land was first registered, or at some later point). And there's a limit to accuracy; the land registry may may show (correctly) that the boundary runs along the line of a hedge, ditch or wall, but it's not conclusive on the question of whether the hedge/ditch/wall belongs to one side or the other, or is a party structure.

The land registry entry will still record information about the county/barony/parish/townland in which the property is situated, which in broad terms is still useful in locating the property, but obviously it tells you l little or nothing about where the boundaries lie.

Given GPS co-ordinates for the boundaries, it is possible with approptiate tools to work out where the property is, but it's not immediately obvious. If I invited you to meet me at ITM co-ordinates 715830, 734697 I dare say you'd eventually find your way to the Spire in O'Connell Street (although, note, simply punching those co-ordinates into Google Maps won't get you there). But it would probably be easier if I just mentioned the Spire in O'Connell Street in the first place.