If Fields Could Talk - Collecting Roscommon's Field Names

Join Rita Kearney, researcher & project coordinator, for an overview of Roscommon Field Names project, what has been collected so far & how you can get involved

Across County Roscommon, thousands of fields, meadows, bogs, lanes, wells and corners of land have names known only to local people. Some have been passed from generation to generation for centuries. Others are remembered by only a handful of individuals today. Together, these names form an important part of our cultural heritage and help tell the story of the county, its communities and its landscape.

Roscommon Field Names’ Project was established in 2023 to record, preserve and share this valuable local knowledge before it disappears. Working with communities, libraries, Men's Sheds, local historians and individual volunteers, among others, the project is building a county-wide archive of field names through Meitheal Logainm, Ireland's collaborative placenames database. So far, almost 200 field names have been recorded specifically through the project, but of course, there are many local contributors who are working on their own collections and uploading them separately. It all matters.