placenames.ie
Townland

Muff

Historic survey records preserve traces of worship in this north Inishowen townland.

Recorded locationMuff55.28949° N · 7.17668° WInteractive map supplied by OpenStreetMap.
Recorded place location · Logainm.ie

The name

A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.

Recorded forms

  • Muff · English · main form

Place & story

Altars added to the map

The National Monuments Service records six Mass stations in Muff townland near Culdaff. They were absent from the first Ordnance Survey map of 1834 but marked on the revision of 1848. The revision namebook described six old Roman Catholic altars used for celebrating Mass, citing the informant J. Byrne. This is evidence of how the sites were recorded in the nineteenth century; the later map entry alone does not establish when the altars were built or explain their absence from the earlier survey. [2]

Huts the survey could not relocate

Another archaeological record concerns several small oval foundations of drystone huts on rocky, gorse-covered ground. It preserves M. R. Colhoun’s account of these structures and a local tradition connecting some with early religious activity. The published survey could not trace them. Their ecclesiastical association therefore remains a recorded tradition, without a securely identified founder, date or surviving group of buildings to describe. [3]

Geographic information

Place type
Townland
County
Donegal
Civil parish
Culdaff
Within
Culdaff
Coordinates
55.28949, -7.17668
Mapped area
1.74 km²
Logainm ID
15166 ↗

People & family history

Census figures refer to the matched historical census area for each year. Boundaries and spellings can change over time.

1926 census

No verified place match is available for this year. This does not indicate a population of zero.

Sources & further reading

  1. Logainm.ie — Muff. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
  2. Muff,Culdaff: six Mass stations,DG005-028 to033,information2008 · P. Walsh, National Monuments Service
  3. Hut siteDG005-010,Archaeological Survey of County Donegal1983 · Brian Lacey and contributors; National Monuments Service
  4. Boundary geometry retains its source attribution and licence in the downloadable geographic record. Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2023-07-18. How this page was prepared.