Tonanilt

Tonanilt, an Anglicisation of the Gaelic, ‘Toin an Ailt’ meaning The Bottom of the Gorge, is a townland in the civil parish of Kinawley, County Cavan, Ireland.

[2] In earlier times the townland was probably uninhabited as it consists mainly of bog and poor clay soils.

It was not seized by the English during the Plantation of Ulster in 1610 or in the Cromwellian Settlement of the 1660s so some dispossessed Irish families moved there and began to clear and farm the land.

The Public Record Office, Belfast holds a map of Hugh Crofton’s estate in Tonanilt dated 1803 under reference number D 3480add.

The National Library of Ireland holds rentals of the Crofton estate from 1769 to 1814, MS Numbers 20,783 and 4530.