Frequently Asked Questions
What is IrishHistory.com?
Ireland wears its history out in the open. A roofless tower house standing in a field of grazing cattle. A holy well at a quiet crossroads, still hung with rags and ribbons. A passage tomb older than the Pyramids, lit once a year by the rising sun. We pass these places every day and rarely stop to wonder how they got there.
IrishHistory.com is a community-built guide to those places, a growing record of the castles, ringforts, round towers, ruined abbeys, holy wells, great houses, famine cottages, standing stones and stranger things scattered across all 32 counties. Some are famous. Most are not. Our aim is to gather them all in one place and tell the stories that make them worth a second look.
It’s a collaborative project, and it depends on people like you. We rely on local knowledge, the eyes and ears of people who actually live near these places, to find the ones we don’t know about yet, and to tell us why they matter.
Who can contribute?
Anyone, anywhere. You don’t need to be a historian, an archaeologist, or even Irish; you just need to be curious and to know somewhere worth sharing. The site is built by its community, one place at a time.
Do I need an account?
Yes; creating a free profile lets you submit places, add photos, and suggest edits to entries that already exist. Your profile keeps track of everything you’ve contributed, the places you’ve marked as “Been There” and “Want to Visit,” and where you sit on your county’s contributor leaderboard. Setting one up takes a minute.
Is it free?
Exploring the guide and contributing to it are free. We’re a labour of love, and the more people who pitch in, the richer the map becomes.
How do I suggest a place?
Our database is always expanding, and we’ve already mapped a great deal of Ireland, so there’s a good chance the place you have in mind is here. The first step is to search the website and check.
- If it’s already listed and you have something to add, a better photo, a missing detail, a correction; use the Suggest an Edit option on that place’s page.
- If it isn’t listed, send it in. We expect to have most places covered, but Ireland is deep and we are certainly not finished. If there’s somewhere you think deserves a spot on the map, tell us about it and we’ll gladly consider it.
We review every submission before it goes live.
What should I send for a new place?
Good news: you don’t need to be a writer. Send us the information you have and tell us what’s noteworthy about the place; we’ll write the entry up in our house style.
What helps most:
- The hook/teaser. What’s unusual, surprising, or quietly remarkable here? Why would someone be interested? Even a sentence or two pointing us at what makes the place special goes a long way.
- The facts. Names, dates, history, local lore; anything you know. Rough notes are perfectly fine.
- Where to find it. A specific location: an address, townland, or coordinates so people can actually get there.
- Good to know. Anything a visitor should be aware of, access, opening hours, whether it’s on private land, a tricky walk in, and so on.
- Sources. Where your information comes from, so we can check the details.
- Photos, if you have them (see the photo guidelines below).
Send us the bones and we’ll do the rest. The more complete your submission, the sooner we can turn it into a published entry.
What kinds of places are a good fit?
The hidden, the overlooked, and the quietly astonishing. Ruined castles and tower houses, ancient sites and megalithic tombs, holy wells and mass rocks, round towers and high crosses, abandoned big houses, vernacular cottages, old industrial works, follies, and curiosities with a story behind them. They don’t have to be remote; a strange history hidden in plain sight on a city street is every bit as welcome as a ruin on a windswept headland.
What should I avoid?
We’ll usually pass on a place if it’s:
- A duplicate of one already in the atlas.
- Somewhere that no longer exists or can’t be verified.
- Simply an advertisement for a business.
- Too broad to be a single entry.
I submitted a place and it hasn’t appeared. What happened?
Usually it just means we haven’t got to it yet, we often receive more submissions than we can get through quickly, so please be patient. We read every submission, but not every one makes it onto the site. We may get in touch to ask for more detail or another photo. Submissions with clear information and a few good photos are always first in the queue.
Will my submission be edited?
Yes, because we write entries up in our house style, the published version may read quite differently from the notes you sent us. We’ll polish the facts, add context, and pick the strongest photos. Once a place is live, other members of the community can suggest further edits too, which we review before they appear.
What kind of photos are you looking for?
This is where a place comes alive. We want photographs that are high quality, atmospheric, and full of curiosity; images that make someone stop scrolling and want to stand in that spot themselves.
Look for the mood as much as the subject: morning mist over a ringfort, low winter light raking across a carved high cross, ivy swallowing a doorway, a holy well in the green hush of a hedgerow. The best submissions invite the viewer to see these historical places through an eye of wonder — not as a tourist snapshot, but as something worth marvelling at.
What makes a good photo?
- Atmosphere first. A well-composed, evocative image is worth more than a dozen flat record shots.
- Show the place from more than one angle. A wide shot for context, a detail shot for character; together they tell the fuller story.
- Clear and well-exposed. Avoid blurry, dark, or tiny images.
- Horizontal orientation works best for the site.
- Decent resolution; at least 640 × 400 pixels, and the bigger the better (up to around 4,000 pixels).
- No watermarks, logos, or date stamps.
- No people, unless a person is essential to the story.
Can I use photos I found online?
Only if they’re cleared for use. Every photo must be legally available, so please submit:
- Your own photos, if you’ve been to the place, include the shots you took.
- Creative Commons images licensed for commercial use.
- Public domain images.
- Images used with the photographer’s explicit permission (please keep a record of that permission in case we ask).
Whatever the source, credit the photographer and include a link to the original image. Good places to find freely usable photos include Creative Commons Search, Wikimedia Commons, Flickr (filtered to “Commercial use allowed”), and public-domain or government collections.
I submitted photos but they weren’t used. Why?
Common reasons: the image was too blurry, too small, or not actually of the right place; it contained too many people; we couldn’t confirm the copyright or didn’t have the rights to use it; it carried a watermark; or the existing photo set was already strong enough. None of it reflects on you; send more and we’ll keep looking.
Coming soon
We’re building something we’re excited about: a section dedicated to the surnames of Ireland, their origins and Irish forms, the families and septs behind them, coats of arms and their meanings, traditional occupations, notable bearers, where in the country a name is most concentrated, and what the old census records reveal. Irish names carry an extraordinary amount of history, and we want to do them justice.
It isn’t live yet; but we’d love your help shaping it.
How can I get involved now?
If you have a connection to a particular surname, or knowledge you’d like to see recorded, register your interest and tell us:
- The surname you’d like to see covered (including any spelling variants).
- What you could contribute; origins and history, notable people who carried the name, family lore, regional connections, or sources we should know about.
We’re gathering this groundwork now so that, when the surnames section opens, it’s rich and accurate from day one. Get in touch and we’ll be in contact as the feature takes shape.
What counts as “culture”?
The history of a place isn’t only in its stones. It’s in the songs sung about it, the poems written for it, and the stories handed down around it. Our culture section is for that living heritage, the words and music that grew out of Ireland’s places and people.
Can I submit a poem or a song?
Yes; we welcome poems, songs, ballads, and similar work for consideration. Whether it’s traditional or your own composition, tell us a little about it and where it comes from, and we’ll take a look.
What about articles?
We’re happy to consider original articles too, with two things to keep in mind:
- The piece must be previously unpublished, not already appearing on another website, blog, or in print, and not published elsewhere afterwards while it’s with us.
- We don’t pay for contributions. This is a community project, and articles are shared in that spirit.
Anything else I should know?
As with everything on the site, submissions must be your own original work, or used with the proper permission of the creator. We review everything before it appears, and may suggest edits along the way.
Reporting a Duplicate Place
With more than 150,000 places mapped across Ireland, a little overlap is inevitable. Now and then the same castle, well or ruin ends up in the guide twice, sometimes under slightly different names or spellings. If you spot a pair like that, we’d be grateful for the heads-up.
How to report a duplicate
It couldn’t be simpler:
- Find the two (or more) entries that point to the same place.
- Copy the link to each one.
- Fill out the form below and paste the links in.
That’s all we need; we’ll take it from there.
What counts as a duplicate?
Two entries for the genuinely same place: the same tower house listed twice, say, or one record under “St. Brigid’s Well” and another as “Brigid’s Holy Well” a few steps away.
If you’re not certain they’re the same, two neighbouring ringforts, perhaps, or a castle and its gatehouse; send them in anyway and we’ll take a look. Better a false alarm than a missed double.
What happens next?
We’ll check the entries and merge them into a single record, keeping the best of the descriptions, photos and details from each so nothing is lost. The surviving entry keeps one clean address on the site, and any links to the old one will still find their way there.
That’s the whole job done on our end; and thank you for helping keep the guide tidy.
Still have a question?
We’re always happy to help. Drop us a line at our Contact page we’ll get back to you.