The names of fields are a valuable part of our local heritage and can tell us much about our local area - how people appreciated the physical landscape, its hills and hollows, streams, and bogs; but also its history and traditions of human settlement, from holy wells, to fairy forts, bailte or house-clusters, burial grounds and landed-estate features. Field names often survive only in oral tradition and because of this they are being lost as land changes ownership and as members of the older generations pass on. The Westmeath Field Names Recording Project was set as a pilot project in 2018. There has been great interest in the project and it continued in 2019 and 2020.

A project coordinator worked with community groups in Kinnegad, Fore, Ballymore, Collinstown, Coole, Multyfarnham, Rochfortbridge, Mount Temple, Tang, and Rosemount. Community Group meetings were held Nov'19 - March '20 and paused in line with C-19 restrictions. To date 100 volunteers have been involved in the project and they have collected 1,400 field names. Names collected were logged to Meitheal Logainm.ie. The project has been profiled in The Irish Times, Agriland.ie, and the Country Life programme on Midlands 103 and the project coordinator will speak about field names and place names on RTÉ television’s Creedon’s Atlas of Ireland later this year. A booklet outlining the project and some of the more interesting results to date is in preparation. This booklet will be available on the website provided.

Please note that the details of events listed above are provided by the relevant Local Authorities.