Where is Tom Gillies

Where is Tom Gillies – In Cyberspace?

As you would expect, I have a presence in cyberspace. The cyberspace answer to the question: “where is Tom Gillies?” is that I can be found at the following locations:

Where is Tom Gillies in the real world?

Find Me Button

I live just outside a small town called Kanturk in the County of Cork in the Republic of Ireland. Kanturk is situated in the Barony of Duhallow and fairly conveniently located in relation to the major cities of Eire. Not especially close to any of them, but not too far from them either. In practical terms, I’m around 60 km, or an hour’s driving from both Cork City and Limerick.

Map showing location of Kanturk
Ireland showing Kanturk and major cities

Thanks to the miracle of the people who work for An Post, the Irish postal service, mail sent to the following address will reach me:

  • Tom Gillies
  • Freemount Road,
  • Kanturk,
  • County Cork
  • Republic of Ireland.

My office is in my home and the world being what it is I’m afraid I’m not going to give you the precise location. Click the button at the top of the page to see the “Zone” identified by Loc8Code for my area. The area in question is 3.5 km square, so that is close small enough to be useful, but large enough for me to maintain a little privacy. You can hop from Loc8Code to Google maps if you wish.

Loc8Codes and Eircodes

Loc8Code is a private enterprise “postcode” system which actually works as you probably expect! If I gave you my full Loc8Code, you could get to within 6m of my front door! With Eircode (the official Irish Post Code, I have no option but to either give you a code which locates me precisely, or an area code (P51) which is so large as to be useless to the curious (and strangely it is also discontiguous!). Several makes of SatNav will accept Loc8Codes.

I’m pleased to report that Google Maps now (November 2017) understands Eircodes. This means that Eircode can be used to find my house. The location has to be precise, so I’m not going to publish it on the internet.

Irish Rural Addresses

Irish rural addresses are notorious. It is claimed that 30% of Irish rural addresses are “non-unique”. This is inconvenient for delivery drivers. Most Irish rural addresses depend on something called a “townland”. A townland is an archaic (some would say arcane) subdivision of a parish. My townland is “Currragh”, and there are several “Curraghs” distributed across Ireland.

Irish place names are fascinating. There are several overlapping hierarchies of area used (Provinces, Counties, Baronies, Parishes, Townlands). The problem is made worse by Ireland being a bi-lingual country and some places being known by synonyms.

For example nearby townlands include:

  • Ballybahollow (English) = Ballybahallaugh (Gaelic/Irish)
  • Kilberrihert
  • Coolbane (2 of them!)
  • Curragh and Curraghs (2 different places!)

And nearby towns and villages include:

  • Kanturk (English) = Ceann Tuirc (Irish)
  • Freemount (English) = Cillin an Chronan (Irish)
  • Newmarket (English) = Ath Trasna (Irish)
  • Mallow (English) = Magh Eala alternatively Mala (Irish)
  • Charleville (English) = Rath Luirc or An Rath (Irish)

It’s great fun, but it makes finding places and any kind of indexing rather hard!