Thursday, November 8, 2012

"Don't Fence Me In!"

One thing leads to another on the computer these days, and today was no different.
I was looking at a nice picture of Cheekpoint on the river Suir 
and it struck me there were some spelling mistakes. Should it have been a Checkpoint on the river Sewer?  No! There is a village called Cheekpoint near Waterford  in Southern Ireland and it is indeed on the river Suir. This led to other place names in Ireland, some familiar from their US counterparts such as Baltimore, others unfamiliar. Quite a few are preceded by the prefix "Bally". Now a Bally is a small division of land in Ireland, called also a Townland, and there are over 6000 named Townlands. At one point the Post Office tried to abolish all Townland names from postal addresses as being superfluous when Postal Codes were introduced, but failed completely in some areas. ( They are from two or three hundred acres up to 7000 acres in size)
They used to have them in England too but they failed to survive. The English words include Vills, Trefs, Towns, Townships, Baileys, and Shires. In the Isle of Man they had Treens.
So many types of land divisions to put fences around! So many fences in the world!
How about Walls next?
Wooden Fence, Metal Gate

Old Fence Corner

Fence Post

Old and New
A very Steep fence!
Here are a few fence pictures to go with today's post. One thing leads to another indeed! Thank you Mary for inspiring this post! This is Mary.
History is not in my baileywick! I usually leave all that to Helene and Alan.....

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