Parish-level statistics of religion for Ireland in 1911.

Table ID:

PAR_1911_I     (1252489)

Contents:

Parish-level statistics of religion for Ireland in 1911.

Approx. number of rows:

2,635

Table type:

Raw Data

Documentation Author:

Humphrey Southall

Chronology:

The data are for the single year 1911.

Sources:

1. These data are a complete transcription of Table XXIX, "Religious professions and sexes of the inhabitants, in each parish, in the county of XXXX in 1911". This table is in the section on 'Religious professions of the people' in the Census of Ireland, 1911 in the volume entitled: 'Area, Houses, and population: also the ages, civil or cojugal condition, occupations, birthplaces, religion, and education of the people. Published by H.M.S.O. there are four volumes, one for each province which are divided up by county. This is very unlike the lengthy tabulations of parishes and townlands in the county reports of the 1851 Census of Ireland.
2. This transcription was initially limited to the six counties of Northern Ireland: Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone, plus the 'Town of Belfast', which is included with Down. The initial transcription for Ulster was done in summer 2022 by Humphrey Southall using OCR software. The transcription was extended to cover the entirety of Ireland in Spring 2023 by Harold Price in Portsmouth.

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Notes:

1. After 1891, the Census of Ireland organised its listings of townlands by Electoral District rather than by parish, but one parish table continued to appear. This table listed numbers belonging to each main religious denomination, but also including the total population of each parish.
2. This table is organised as an alphabetical listing of parishes within each county, with no reference to baronies.
3. Each county table is followed by exact counts, for the county as a whole, of each of the additional religious groups included here in 'All other Denominations'. These additional exact counts are not transcribed here.
4. The 1911 reports include tables for several cities that are not currently defined individually at county level in the AUO. These include:
   • The City of Belfast, has 3 parishes listed within it; Holywood, Knockbreda and Shankill
   • The City of Londonderry, has 2 parishes listed within it; Clondermot and Templemore
   • The City of Cork, has seven parishes listed within it; Holy Trinity, St. Anne's-shandon, St. Finbar's, St. Mary's-shandon, St. Nicholas', St Paul's, St Peter's
   • The City of Dublin, has 33 parishes listed within it
   • The City of Kilkenny, has 5 parishes listed within it
   • The City of Limerick, has 8 parishes listed within it
   • The City of Waterford, has 11 parishes listed within it
   Belfast, Londonderry and Cork have been manually assigned unit IDs, this means all parish data for Ulster can be mapped. The other rows have been matched by adding a relationship to the barony of the same name as the county which have a relationship to the parishes. There remains 16 rows (9 distinct parishes) unmatched within the city of Dublin. Further work needs to be done to amend the AUO to resolve this issue fully.

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Checking:

1. Very extensive row-wise and column-wise checksums were used when the data were entered into Excel. These have yet to be replicated in Postgres.
2. Some parishes cannot be matched to the AUO, and are presumably newer creations. Within Northern Ireland, there are six parishes: Craigs and Portglenone in Antrim, Kildarton in Armagh, Magherahamlet in Down, Formoyle in Londonderry and Learmount in Tyrone.
   Within the rest of Ireland, only one, St Bartholomew's in Dublin county.
3. Some parishes have been manually matched in the loading script, but further work in the AUO would eliminate the need for this.
   • (i) Parish names which include the barony name(s) in brackets where there were multiple parishes in the same county with the same name. These have been matched by extracting the barony names and matching those prior to matching these parishes.
   • (ii) Names which are manually altered in the loading script in order to match parish names in the AUO.
4. Other outstanding parish issues where the row is not yet matched to the AUO:
   • (i) Some parishes appear only once in the county table, but there are two units of that name in that county in the AUO so it is unclear which should be matched. These parishes are: Kilcolman (Mayo), Killeedy (Limerick), Templemichael (Cork).
   • (ii) There is a row for Palmerston and a row for Palmerstown both in Dublin County. Both parishes in the AUO have the first name given above as their preferred name and the second as their alternate name. There is no obvious way to identify which row relates to which unit.
   • (iii) Some parishes appear to link to one county in the table, but only appear linked to a different county in the AUO. Clonrush (Clare), in AUO links only to Galway. Inishbofin (Galway), in AUO links only to Mayo. Either an additional relationship or a change in relationship is needed for these parishes.
   • (iv) 19 parishes appear twice with links to two counties in the table, but only have links to one county in the AUO. These rows match for the county relationships that appears in the AUO, but not for the ones that do not.
   All these issues have yet to be addressed in the script.

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Columns within table:

Column	Type	Contents
row_type	Text string (max.len.=28).	Type of row: Nation (1) Province (4) County (39) Parish (2591)
province	Text string (max.len.=20).	Name of the province containing the county.
volume_page	Text string (max.len.=8).	Page number from which data transcribed (not included for Ulster).
county	Text string (max.len.=28).	Name of the county. This always contains a value.
parish	Text string (max.len.=84).	Name of the parish. This will be empty for counties.
part_of	Text string (max.len.=6).	Contains 'P' if part of the parish was separately listed under a different county, and otherwise empty. The notes column usually provides more details.
bracketed_letter	Text string (max.len.=20).	Letters that appear in brackets immediately after the parish name, providing a link to footnotes. In general, any such notes have been copied into the 'notes' column.
tot_pop	Integer number.	Population: Persons.
males	Integer number.	Population: Males.
females	Integer number.	Population: Females.
catholic_tot	Integer number.	Religious Professions: Roman Catholics: Total.
catholic_m	Integer number.	Religious Professions: Roman Catholics: Males.
catholic_f	Integer number.	Religious Professions: Roman Catholics: Females.
episc_tot	Integer number.	Religious Professions: Protestant Episcopalians: Total.
episc_m	Integer number.	Religious Professions: Protestant Episcopalians: Males.
episc_f	Integer number.	Religious Professions: Protestant Episcopalians: Females.
presb_tot	Integer number.	Religious Professions: Presbyterians: Total.
presb_m	Integer number.	Religious Professions: Presbyterians: Males.
presb_f	Integer number.	Religious Professions: Presbyterians: Females.
meth_tot	Integer number.	Religious Professions: Methodists: Total.
meth_m	Integer number.	Religious Professions: Methodists: Males.
meth_f	Integer number.	Religious Professions: Methodists: Females.
other_tot	Integer number.	Religious Professions: All other Denominations: Total.
other_m	Integer number.	Religious Professions: All other Denominations: Males.
other_f	Integer number.	Religious Professions: All other Denominations: Females.
notes	Text string (max.len.=124).	Footnotes appearing in the original tables. So far, all notes simply say in which other county the remainder of the relevant parish is listed in.
province_unit	Integer number.	ID number for the province containing the county, as defined in the AUO.
county_unit	Integer number.	ID number for the county, as defined in the AUO.
barony_unit	Integer number.	ID number for the barony, as defined in the AUO for those rows where parish only distinguished by relationship to barony.
parish_unit	Integer number.	ID number for the parish, as defined in the AUO.
rec_num	Integer number.	Sequence number to keep rows in their original order, added on loading the data into GBHDB.