Poor Law Unions and Electoral Divisions

Poor Law Unions came into being after the Poor Law Act of 1838 and the building of workhouses in the 1840s. The new Poor Law Unions were based on the main market towns throughout the province and each Union was subdivided into a number of District Electoral Divisions which elected members to the Boards of Guardians which were responsible for the running of the workhouses and the operation of the Poor Law generally.

Often Poor Law Unions crossed county boundaries. This was the case with the Ballymoney and Coleraine Poor Law Unions. The map of Ballymoney and surrounding Poor Law Unions shows that the Ballymoney Poor Law Union crossed the county boundary into County Londonderry to include areas around Garvagh, Kilrea and Tamlaght O'Crilly. Equally the Coleraine Poor Law Union crossed the county boundary into County Antrim to include areas around Portrush and Bushmills.

For those of you who want to use the 1901 and 1911 Census Enumerators' Returns and the Revisions to the Griffith's Valuation from 1864 to research a particular family or townland it is important that you know which DED the townland was located in from the 1850s to 1911.  It is also useful to know which parish and barony it was in around 1850. You can find this information in the  Alphabetical Index to the Townlands and Towns, Parishes and Baronies of Ireland which was published in 1851 and at various intervals from that until the early twentieth century. Copies are available in PRONI, Belfast.

Alternatively, you can use the index pages in the Griffith's Printed Valuation of 1859. I have scanned in the index pages for the part of Ballymoney Poor Law Union in County Antrim and the part of Coleraine Poor Law Union in County Antrim. Here you will be able to see which barony, parish and electoral division a townland was situated in. Also, it will tell you the sheet numbers of the six inch Ordnance Survey maps which cover the townland. Note that the Parish of Ballymoney is covered on pages 2 and 3.

I have also provided two maps of DEDs in the Ballymoney area. One of these, dated 1859, shows the location and extent of the original DEDs in Ballymoney Poor Law Union. DEDS were reorganised a number of times from 1898 onwards. The second map shows the DEDs which were part of the Ballymoney Rural District in the 1920s. These lasted until the re-organisation of local government in the 1970s.