Historical maps and gazetteers of Ireland

Question

Happy new year!

New freespace page Historical maps and gazetteers of Ireland describes the main historical maps of Ireland from Ptolemy onwards, with a particular focus on Tudor and Stuart plantation maps, the Down Survey and the Ordnance Survey. It also lists and links to more specialist maps like those for Giffith's valuation, the grand juries, early maps of the Irish road network, the bog survey and many atlases. There is a section on local historical Irish maps. All the main repositories of Irish maps online are listed.

A section on gazetteers points, for example, to the description of Ireland produced by Giraldus Cambrensis, not long after the Norman 'Strongbow' invasion, and the incredibly detailed Parliamentary Gazetteer drawing on the 1831 and 1841 censuses. Finally, there is a list of and links to some sources on Irish townlands and their names.

Please leave a reply or contact me if you have any suggestions for improving it.

Comments

Very nicely done Alan!

Thanks

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Very nice! Thank you!

Answer 1

Thanks Alan!
2024 is starting very well,

I have only skimmed through this free space page but it looks fantastic. I will need more than a month to check through it in more detail.

Answer 2

That looks excellent! Thank you.

Answer 3

Impressive!

I did find it difficult to navigate once in a section. Is there an overall index that could direct me to the maps I might be interested in? (eg., Co Tyrone, 1790-1810, Donagheady or Strabane)

Comments

Unfortuately there are too many combinations of places and dates for me to provide an index of which maps are available for each.

Taking your example, 1790 is between the Down Survey and the start of the Ordnance Survey, so you do not have access to the detailed maps available in those series. Some fairly detailed maps for that period were produced by the grand juries. The Leslie Brown Collection has these grand jury maps of Tyrone. You can also see some fairly detailed road maps c 1777 eg in this search for Strabane on SWilson.info.

The National Library of Ireland's Longfield collection holds these maps with keyword Tyrone.

If you are willing to move forward to 1833, you will find the OS 6" maps of co Tyrone listed on the National Library of Scotland including this index map to the 6" series for Tyrone and individual maps like this one (c Tyone sheet 5) which includes Strabane.

Answer 4

Awesome work, Alan! Thanks so much! I adore maps and gazetteers, so it's great to have these resources in an easy to access manner and your detailed descriptions are very helpful.

I wonder if you could add date ranges to the main Contents listings?

best,

Comments

Have done.

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Thanks so much, Alan. The dates are very helpful.

Answer 5

Amazing. Thank you.