Historical Maps and Gazetteers of Ireland

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: Ireland
Surname/tag: Ireland, Irish_Roots

You are here: Early modern Irish sources / Historical Maps and Gazetteers of Ireland

Historical Maps and Gazetteers of Ireland

Most of what follows are not sources for genealogical research (a few items are) but they can help tell or illustrate how and where our Irish ancestors and cousins lived. The structure chosen for this page involves some duplication. The first group of items lists guides to historical Irish maps. The second group highlights the main maps available for each period of Irish history. A small third group points to nautical and other specialist maps. The fourth group points to some on-line historical local maps. The fifth lists the on-line repositories of Irish maps (inevitably duplicating much of the earlier groups). The final group relates to gazetteers and townland names.

The single best place to view historical Irish maps is The Leslie Brown Collection and the best single guide to what is available is that from University College Dublin. The most useful single gazetteer is The Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland. The map highlights are some of the Tudor and Stuart plantation maps, Petty's maps for the Down Survey and the detailed maps produced by the Ordnance Survey.

If you are looking for a particular type of map (Down Survey, Ordnance Survey, valuation etc) or a map from a particular period (Tudor, post union), then I hope you will find an explanation and link to it below. If you are in a hurry and are looking for a particular place, you could do worse than using this search on Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury. To use it 1. add a keyword (eg 'Waterford'), 2. press <return>, 3. delete my initial keyword ('Limerick') and 4. filter by date if necessary. Or you could browse UCD's guide to finding maps by county.

The National Library of Ireland published a book of map facsimilies, 'Ireland from Maps', Dublin, 1980. Unfortunately it is not available on-line, but you can see the contents list here.

Please let me know if you find typos, broken links or errors in explanation or if you have suggestions for other items to include or improvements of any kind.

Contents 1 Guides to historical Irish maps 2 Historical Irish maps by period 2.1 Early maps of Ireland (bef 1590) 2.2 Tudor and Stuart plantation maps (1550-1642) 2.3 Petty's Down Survey maps (1655-58) 2.4 Between Petty and the Ordnance Survey (1660-1830) 2.5 Ordnance Survey (1829-present) 2.6 Other maps based on the Ordnance Survey (1847-1942) 2.7 Other post-union maps (1837-present) 3 Nautical and other specialist maps of Ireland 4 Historical Local Irish maps 5 On-line repositories of historical Irish maps 6 Townlands and gazetteers 6.1 Gazetteers 6.2 Townlands and place names

Guides to historical Irish maps

Undoubtedly the best guide to historical Irish maps is that produced by University College Dublin, which is excellent in every way. It points to maps available in UCD's own hard copy and digital collections and to digital collections around the world. It more than warrants some serious study.

• This excellent site from University College Dublin is a first class and well organised guide to Irish maps with links to all the important places.
• National Library of Ireland maps mainly describes maps in its own collection, some of which have been digitised and are available to view through its catalogue.
• As well as its own map collection Trinity College Dublin has this useful guide.

Historical Irish maps by period

The maps described below contain two detailed, all-Ireland, sets of maps, the Down Survey maps of 1655-58 and the Ordnance Survey maps produced from 1829 onwards, as well as other less detailed maps connected with the Tudor and Stuart plantations and various specialist maps, atlases etc produced from the 18th century onwards.

Early maps of Ireland (bef 1590)

There are a few maps of Ireland pre-dating the main period of Tudor and Stuart plantations, for example

• The National Library of Scotland has this map of the British Isle by Claudius Ptolemy (c 150 AD) in an edition printed in 1525.
• A lovely map of the British Isles and part of western Europe c 1200 AD produced by Giraldus Cambrensis in his Topographia Hibernica. (See Gazetteers below.)
• The Leslie Brown Collection has two maps of Ireland c 1500 and Ortelius's map of Ireland c 1550 on this page.
• The David Rumsey Collection has a map of Ireland by Mercator, c1564 .
• The Bibliothèque nationale de France has Hybernia nunc Irlant c 1570.
• The Library of Congress and other collections have this map of the British Isles from the atlas Theatrvm orbis terrarvm by Abraham Ortelius, published 1570 and this map by Ortelius published 1589.

Hiberniae, Britannicae Insvlae nova descripto - Abraham Ortelius, 1589.

• Queen's University of Belfast's Ewart Map Collection (Ireland) contains 150 manuscript and facsimile maps of Ireland from different periods including several early Irish maps such as this magnificent example which shows the territories of the Irish princes, chiefs, septs etc and the districts in posession of the English lords in 1567.

Hibernia insula non procul ab Anglia vulgare Hirlandia vocata 1567

Tudor and Stuart plantation maps (1550-1642)

Detailed mapping of Ireland started with the Tudor and Stuart plantations. Many of the maps are surprisingly detailed and include the main families (Irish or English) in each place. They may therefore contain useful genealogical information. For more information on the plantations see here.

• Irish maps c.1558-c.1610 extracted from the State Papers (UK National Archives) is a series containing 'more than 60 different maps depicting plantations, fortifications and townships in Ireland during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, in the 16th and 17th centuries.' These maps are extracted not from the calendars of state papers, but from the underlying documents. They are described in a research guide here with the underlying maps here. The maps can be downloaded individually from the UK National Archives; there may be a charge, although at the time of writing (December 2023) up to 100 items can be downloaded free in a 30 day period.

A generalle description of Ulster (part of the State Papers and Maps of Escheated Counties)

• The Hardiman Atlas, a collection of 80 maps of (places in) Ireland collected by George Carew (1555-1629) who was active in the Tudor plantations of Ireland (initially in Leinster, then as president of Munster and finally as a surveyor of Ulster). (For more information on George Carew and his papers see here.) The Atlas includes some outstanding maps of each of the provinces, several of the counties and some towns of Ireland and some maps of battles, all drawn between about 1580 and 1610, including this wonderful map of Ulster. However, some of the maps included by Hardiman appear to be from periods after Carew.

A map of the province of Ulster c 1591-1598 by Francis Jobson

• Some maps of places in Munster appear in 'Pacta Hibernia' vol 1 and vol 2 which relied on Carew's material (background here).
• Produced towards the end of the 18th century, but showing the situation much earlier is 'Ortelius Improved, or a new map of Ireland : Wherin are inserted the principal families of Irish and English extraction, who possess'd that kingdon[sic] on the commencement of the seventeenth century' (S Thompson, Dublin, c 1795).

Ortelius Improved, or a new map of Ireland : Wherin are inserted the principal families of Irish and English extraction, who possess'd that kingdon[sic] on the commencement of the seventeenth century

• The National Library of Ireland has this collection of maps by Richard Bartlett and others created circa 1602. The collection 'Includes maps and plans for towns and fortifications in various counties, including Armagh, Cork, Leitrim, Monaghan, Tyrone and Waterford. It also contains plans of structures such as Dublin Castle and maps depicting military encampments during the Nine Years War.' Richard Bartlett was Queen Elizabeth's map maker.
• Queen's University Belfast has made available a digital set of 31 Maps of the escheated counties of Ireland, 1609, mostly produced by Josias Bodley before the start of the Ulster plantation. More information about them can be found in this QUB blog post and in this listing of the maps. The maps are from a volume produced by the Ordnance Survey in 1861, reproducing originals mostly from the State Papers; there is therefore a considerable overlap between them and the maps in the State Papers above, although the scope of the State Paper collection is wider, containing maps from earlier periods and of other parts of Ireland.
• The Kingdome of Irland Devided into severall Provinces and the againe devided into Counties Newly described. . . . 1610, a marvellously detailed single page, colour map including stylised pictures of Irish men and women, 'gentle', 'civil' and 'wilde', included in the David Rumsey collection at Stanford University. (The same map is available on Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury (ref LBC EM 53), but only in black and white.)
• The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, by John Speed, published in 1611/12 held by the University of Cambridge Library. The work is a beautiful coloured atlas with 66 pages on the British Isles, with details on the countries of England, Scotland and Wales and the counties within them. The atlas has pages for Connacht, Leinster (with the City of Dublin), Munster and Ulster.

The Countie of Leinster with the citie Dublin Described - 1611.

• There are some maps of Londonderry after the start of the plantation showing the proportions managed by the different companies in Londonderry and the London companies, 1609-1629, being a survey and other documents submitted to King Charles I. by Sir Thomas Phillips, published by PRONI. Annaleigh Margey (see below) explains that these maps were produced for Sir Thomas by Thomas Raven in 1622. She tells us that two complete sets of Raven's maps exist, held by the Draper's Hall and Lambeth Palace Library. There is also a set in North Down Museum. None of these is available on-line, but copies of some of them feature in various places, such as The Great Parchment Book website, this plantation booklet and these BBC 2 programmes.
• As noted above the Leslie Brown Collection has a good selection of early Irish maps, including maps from the Tudor and Stuart periods.
• In the period immediately before the Down Survey is this map of the areas most affected by the rebellion of 1641.

History Ireland has this article Visualising the Plantation:mapping the changing face of Ulster by Annaleigh Margey, the author of Mapping Ireland, c. 1550–1640: an illustrated catalogue of the plantation maps of Ireland (Dublin, 2009). This work, from the Irish Manuscripts Commission, apparently contains all 625 known plantation maps and costs €580. The same author wrote this entry on livery company maps in the Great Parchment Book blog.

Petty's Down Survey maps (1655-58)

William Petty's Down Survey of 1655-58 was first ever detailed, mapped land survey on a national scale anywhere in the world. It was carried out as part of the Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland to assess the land to be seized from those involved in the rebellion of 1641 and awarded to soldiers and adventurers. Its main product was a map of each parish of Ireland, showing the individual townlands (the smallest unit of land in Ireland's system) within it, describing their size and the quality of their land, valuing the land and listing its owners before the rebellion of 1641 (each described as either protestant or papist.) Most copies of the maps in most archives were destroyed in a variety of fires, but all the known surviving original and copy maps have now been digitised and assembled. The survey is a key source of genealogical information for the period.

Down Survey map of the parish of Carne, Forth, Wexford (low quality screen grab)

Down Survey map of the barony of Forth, co Wexford (low quality screen grab)

The survey also produced summary maps for each barony, and Petty himself later compiled an atlas with a whole Ireland map and summaries for each province and county.

General Map of Ireland with the fower Provinces and Countyes thereof

Petty's personal set of the summary county, provincial and national maps was captured by a French vessel when en route to London and ended up in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, from where the Ordnance Survey eventual made and published a copy. Other copies of various maps survived in various archives, although there are a few gaps. Some copies of the maps were coloured and some monochrome. You can read more about the Down Survey in context here.

The Down Survey web site produced by Trinity College Dublin showcases the maps and is the best way to view them. There are two ways of accessing these maps on the web site

• The Down Survey maps page opens with the all Ireland map. From drop down boxes on the left you can choose a county or within a county a barony and within a barony a parish. At each choice the relevant summary or detailed map is shown.
• The historical GIS page opens with a map of all Ireland. From here you can choose one of four background options, modern topographical, satelite, Down Survey or 1890 Ordnance Survey. You can zoom in or out and move around whichever map you choose. For the Down Survey background option, the system will pick the right level of detail or summary and stitch two or more maps together as appropriate. On the lowest level it shows the outlines of townlands (even on the satelite or modern maps) and provides information on pre- and post Cromwellian settlement owners of land. You can choose to add an overlay of 17th century Irish roads.

(The Down Survey web site also uses information from the Books of Survey and Distribution and the Pender Census - all described here - to feed into its historical GIS, making it very useful to genealogists and historians, although as always it is best to refer to the underlying documents.)

Another excellent place to view the maps where they are in high quality and easy to find is on The Leslie Brown Collection. The parish and barony maps appear under the 'Down Survey' heading and the county and provincial maps are listed under 'Map Collections' where they are described as Ireland and Counties, sir William Petty.

The same maps are available on Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury although it is harder there to find the maps that you want - you don't have the simple menu of counties, baronies etc that you find on the Down Survey or Leslie Brown sites. You could try this search adding a term for the location you are looking for which may or may not work. There is more information on using the Virtual Treasury here.

This search on the National Library of Ireland catalogue shows 11 county and provincial maps available there in digital format. The NLI also has several hundred copies of Down Survey maps in manuscript collections (call numbers MS 712 - MS 726) which appear not to have been digitised there, but which do form a large part of the Virtual Record Treasury's digital collection of the maps here.

The summary maps are available directly from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France from where you can download them.

Sir William Petty's Down Survey summary map of the Queen's County c 1658

Between Petty and the Ordnance Survey (1660-1830)

Although nothing as detailed as the Down Survey was produced until the Ordnance Survey started, new and improved maps were still produced. A selection of them is listed below.

• Hibernia Regnum (Kingdom of Ireland) in Blaeu's Atlas Maior of 1662-5 (in the National Library of Scotland)
• National Museums NI has this Map of the invasions of England and Ireland with al their Civill wars.

The invasions of England and Ireland with al their Civill Wars since the Conquest by I Speed

• The British Library has a series of maps by Thomas Phillips who was sent to Ireland in the 1690s to survey the fortifications. This link is to a Library Hub catalogue search and this to his map of Belfast on Flickr.
• Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury has a map of the siege of Londonderry (from PRONI).
• Also maps of estates forfeited in the Williamite confiscations and bestowed in 1700 on Henri de Massue de Ruvigny Earl of Galway.
• A pocket companion of Ireland, 1728, at atlas produced by Herman Moll 'A Set of Twenty New and Correct Maps of Ireland. with the Great Roads and Principal Cross-Roads. shewing the computed Miles from Town to Town' - one of the first map series to show the road network, the atlas also has a national map and provincial maps. Also in the Norman B Levanthal collection.

The counties of Sligo and Mayo from Herman Moll's 1728 'A pocket companion of Ireland'

• Tabula Hiberniae novissima et emendatissima. A Mapp of the Kingdom of Ireland newly corrected & improved by actuall observations. Divided into its Provinces Counties & Baronies ... also a short description of the Kingdom. This link is to the British Library's collection on Flickr.
• Various map-.makers produced updates to Petty's all-Ireland and provincial maps including 'The kingdom of Ireland ... its four provinces' (Alexis Hubert Jaillot, Nicolas Sanson, 1693), A new map of Ireland (John Senex, 1720), 'The Kingdom of Ireland' (John Rocque, 1790), Ireland and its Counties (Grierson, 1732), Irish Counties (Grierson jnr 1832), Ireland and its counties (Scale, 1776), the latter from his Hibernian Atlas listed under Gazetteers below.
• The main detailed level maps of Ireland published between the Down Survey and the start of the Ordnance Survey were the Grand Jury maps shown under 'map collections' on the Leslie Brown Collection and also (copied from there) on Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury. The grand juries were the main form of county government for the 17th - 19th centuries; many of them produced maps of their county at various levels of detail.
• Taylor and Skinner's Maps of the Roads Ireland, surveyed in 1777 and sold as a book in Dublin and London, is available in book form on line. The maps are also available in various on-line repositories such as the Leslie Brown Collection. Perhaps most useful is Swilson.info's searchable version of the maps.

One of the Taylor and Skinner maps of Ireland

• A map of the Grand Canal of Ireland by Thomas Bowen from the May 1779 edition of the Gentleman's Magazine, London
• A single page road map A map of Ireland divided into provinces and counties, shewing the great and cross roads with the distances of the principal towns from Dublin (William Fadden 1798)
• The Irish Bog Commission (established 1809) produced four reports between 1810 and 1814. The reports set out, in detail, how 1,013,358 acres of bog could be drained, manured and brought into production as agricultural land. Each report contains detailed maps which set out the proposed lines of drainage and the highest and lowest point of each bog. The maps and a brief history of the Commission are available on the Bord na Móna web site. The maps are also on The Leslie Brown Collection. (The surveys were carried out by Richard Griffith, who later conducted the valuation of Ireland. Documents relating to the Commission were published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission and are available free here.)
• The Longfield map collection held by the National Library of Ireland, is the collection of a firm of surveyors of maps that they made mainly of private estates for their owners between the years 1770 and 1840. The collection appears to contain some 1,600 items some 960 of which have been digitised and are available on line. The NLI writes 'The maps represent all counties in Ireland with the exception of Kerry. Dublin City and County represent more than 44 per cent of all maps. Kildare, Meath and Roscommon are very well represented. There are comparatively few maps of the west and north of Ireland.'

Ordnance Survey (1829-present)

The Ordnance Survey was created after the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 to survey the Scottish highlands. (See OS-about-history, OSi historical maps and data and the creation of Irish historic mapping.) It initally made the 'great map' of highland roads, hills, rivers, types of land cover and settlements at a scale of 1:36 000 (1.75 inches to a mile). It then mapped areas of the south coast of England thought at risk of invasion from France and in the nineteenth century moved on to mapping England at two inches to one mile, reduced to one inch to a mile when printed - a process that was not completed until 1870.

In 1824 'almost the entire staff of Ordnance Survey was shipped across the Irish Sea to carry out a six inches to the mile survey of Ireland for accurate land taxation.' The first Irish local survey was completed in 1829 and published in the 1830s. The entire survey was finished in 1846. Various products were eventually published including

• The original 6" to one mile series, which was updated and re-published several times between 1846 and 1960 and for Northern Ireland after then. Some editions were produced in black and white and others in colour.
• A 1" to one mile series, produced in 1859 and updated various times. Two different editions were published, topographical and adminstrative, the latter showing all kinds of boundaries. Both editions were available in either colour or black and white.
• A black and white 25" to one mile series, published between 1897 and 1913 - using a total of 25,000 sheets to cover the whole of Ireland.
• A series of town and city maps some surveyed at either five or ten feet to one mile between 1837 and 1896 and others enlarged from the 25" to one mile maps.
• A series of indices, some lists of maps sorted in various orders and others themselves as maps. So a single map of Ireland acted as an index for the 100 sheets in the 1" series, a map of each county acted as an index to the 6" maps covering that county and multiple maps for each county acted as indices for the 25" maps. These index maps were good maps in their own right and are often the best way to see townland and barony boundaries.
• Various reports, other publications and ad hoc maps.

The various different maps, indices and other publications are available in different places, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

• The National Library of Scotland holds many different editions of the 1" and 6" series for Ireland and also their index maps. You can find the maps in two ways, from a list where you can pick the exact map that you want and from a map interface where you can either zoom in to or search for the name of a place that you want and then pick the map. (A seamless version with overlays is described as 'in process' as of December 2023.) The NLS helpfully explains that Crown Copyright on all products like maps expires 50 years after publication and therefore allows you to download .pdfs of all these maps (whole or part) in their original high quality free of charge. (Many other sites make false copyright claims and try to charge you.)

Part of a map index to the 1841 OS 6 series for county Wexford

• Tailte Éireann (incorporating the former Ordnance Survey of Ireland) has an Irish Townland and Historical Map Viewer. It has many of the different editions of 6" and 25" maps which appear as a seamless whole. You can add different overlays, such as the different map sheet boundaries, the townland boundaries or historical features such as historic marshes or flood plains or collieries, foundaries or gravel pits. UCD has a useful guide to the Townland and Historical Map Viewer. Tailte Éireann also has a more general map viewer where you can view the same and some other maps, and add more up-do-date overlays like modern day pharamicies, Garda stations and Covid-19 statistics. Unfortunately, you can't download maps from either of these viewers; you have to pay for printed copies or .pdfs or make a screen print. The Tailte Éireann map viewers cover the 32 counties, but some functions may only work for the 26 counties. eg you can browse the 32 counties and view their 6" maps but the place name search and the 25" maps only seem to work for the 26 counties.

Part of an OS 1 inch map of Tullamore (Offaly).

Part of an OS 6 inch map of Tullamore (Offaly).

Ballydarton House (one of the Watson properties), barony of Idrone, co Carlow, c 1900, OSi 25 to 1mile map

• PRONI has a historical maps viewer with the Ordnance Survey maps of the six counties. It provides roughly the same functionality as the Tailte Éireann system which covers the thirty-two counties.
• UCD has a very large selection of the OSi's town maps, also described under local historical maps below.
• The Leslie Brown Collection has the edition of the 1" maps published in 1862 and also the index maps to the 25" series, both under 'topographical maps'.
• Although the 6" OS maps are not available on the Leslie Brown Collection web site, one edition of them is available (from the Leslie Brown Collection) on Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury. Navigate to LBC OS 6. The Virtual Treasury also has an edition of the 1" maps (also from the Leslie Brown Collection) under ref LBC OS 1 for black and white and under LBC OS 2 for colour.
• The index maps to the 25" series (which also act as an index to the 6" series) were published and are available on archive.org.
• Yale University Library has this one-off publication 'A general map of Ireland : showing the county and barony boundaries, the rivers, railways, canals, leading roads and principal demesnes ... (New Edition)' published in the 1880s at a scale of 1" to four miles.

A general map of Ireland : showing the county and barony boundaries, the rivers, railways, canals, leading roads and principal demesnes ... (New Edition) (south west quarter)

• Complementing the maps themselves, are The Ordnance Survey Letters, the surveyors' field notes, commentaries and correspondence to the Ordnance Survey headquarters in Dublin. Ask about Ireland explains: 'They were written between 1834 and 1841 and exist for twenty-nine counties, excluding Cork, Antrim, and Tyrone. The Letters' collection is commonly known as O'Donovan's Ordnance Survey Letters, after the historian, John O'Donovan (1806-1861), who led the project of information collection, notation and compilation. The collection provides a unique glimpse into everyday life in many parts of Ireland in the years leading up to the Great Famine. The Letters provide the surveyors' experiences of the places they visited and their accounts of the local history, topography and antiquities of each parish. Also included are their informal reflections on the living conditions and impressions of the local people in the parishes visited.' They are available on Ask about Ireland and some are also on archive.org.
• The original Ordnance Survey of Ireland was also charged with standardising place names. In the process the surveyors recorded different names in use. Their name books are available on Ask about Ireland.
• Various maps, reports and other publications are available on archive.org and hathitrust.

The Digital repository of Ireland has recently (June 2024) released a 'Digital archive of Ireland's Ordnance Survey' including maps, name books, letters, memoirs and drawings. It covers the whole of Ireland and includes material from the Royal Irish Academy, the National Library of Scotland and other archives. A press release about the archive can be found here and the archive itself here.

Other maps based on the Ordnance Survey (1847-1942)

After the Ordnance Survey's initial map series was finished, various other public bodies used its maps as the skeleton for their own publications. Some of these are listed below.

• Griffith's valuation maps were produced to support the property valuations published between 1847 and 1864. The valuation is available free and widely consulted on AskAboutIreland.ie here. AskaboutIreland also has a free interface to view valuation maps, although purists will note that the maps available there are from a later valuation created between 1870 and 1883. The maps show the outlines of the different properties listed in the valuation tables. For those with a subscription, the original valuation maps and related property plans (for the 26 counties of today's Republic of Ireland) are available on FindmyPast from where they can be downloaded in all their detail. (John Grenham has a useful write-up of the different maps here.)

Griffith's valuation map for Tullow, parish of Fennagh, co Carlow, c 1845

• Geological survey maps of Ireland. UCD holds two volumes containing some 200 maps of Ireland created between 1859 and 1913. The Leslie Brown Collection also holds many of them (under topographical maps).
• The Municipal Boundary Commission appointed in 1880 produced maps of more than 150 towns in order to study whether or not to extend the town boundaries. They are available on the Leslie Brown Collection in two alphabetical groups Antrim-Gorey and Gilford-Youghal. They are not as detailed as street maps. (These are also mentioned under Historical Local maps below.)
• WWII Military maps. Although the Ordnance Survey was historically part of the military, more specialised military maps were produced by what was later called the 'War Office' or more specifically the 'Geographical Section of the General Staff' (GSGS). These maps are available on Map Warper, on the National Library of Scotland (together with the OS maps) and on the Leslie Brown Collection (where they appear under 'Map collections' and are called 'GSGS'). UCD has this all-Ireland map index to the GSGS maps.

Other post-union maps (1837-present)

Map making did not finish with the Ordnance survey. This is just a small selection.

• Also listed under 'gazetteers' below Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) included a series of county maps of Ireland.
• The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge produced this detailed single-sheet map of Ireland in 1838.
• Various railway maps were produced including those of the Railway Commissioners in 1838. These are available on UCD and the Leslie Brown Collection. The David Rumsey collection has this revised version of the Railway Commissioners' map produced in 1855. Swilson.info has this railway map dated 1904, produced by Bartholomew. ATU and HeritageMaps.ie have an online resource mapping Ireland's historical rail network (explanatory notice here).
• A map dated 1847 showing the volume of traffic on different Irish roads produced by General Sir Henry Drury Harness.
• Philips' Handy Atlas of the Counties of Ireland John Bartholomew (revised P W Joyce), George Philip & Sons, London, 1884. (Maps extracted from the 1904 and 1907 editions of the atlas here.)
• A home rule map of Ireland (James Ballance, Malden (Mass.) 1893), including a detailed map of Ireland with bits of information on its physical and economic geography, but mainly featuring the proposed home rule bill, with quotes from Parnell and Gladstone and details of support for and opposition to home rule.

Home rule map of Ireland

• Harvard University has the Irish Shooting and Fishing Agency's new map of Ireland produced by John Bartholomew and published in 1895.
• NUI Galway has digitised the Memorial Atlas of Ireland (L.J. Richards & Company, Philadelphia, 1901) which it writes 'Presenting the island in wonderful detail, of particular value here is the completeness of boundary lines of the baronies and civil parishes. These were not typically well presented in maps of Ireland at the time.' NUI Galway has this description of the Atlas linking to a site for the Atlas live which was not working when I tried it. The same atlas is available on Map Warper and on The Leslie Brown Collection.
• Bartholomew's 1/4 inch (to 1 mile) series of 1940 is available to browse at the National Library of Scotland.

Clonmel Tipperary from Bartholomew's 1/4 inch 1940 map

Not really a historical map, but a series of maps shedding light on Irish history can be found in The Atlas of the Great Irish Famine 1845-1852 (John Crowey Ed., Cork University Press, 2012, €59.00). RTE has a web page showcasing four of the atlas maps.

Top

Nautical and other specialist maps of Ireland

Some historical nautical maps and charts of Ireland are available at the places shown below. There are doubtless many others.

• Longainm.ie's historical maps include a large number of coastal charts taken from a 1776 survey.
• The UK's National Maritime Museum has this collection of naval maps of Ireland available to view on-line, including this lovely map (produced c 1590) of the course of the Spanish Armada around Britain and Ireland.

Course of the Spanish Armada around the British Isles

• The Leslie Brown Collection has a good selection of nautical maps and charts.
• Many of the maps of Ireland in The Bibliothèque Nationale de France are nautical charts.

There are endless other specialised maps of Ireland covering for example Catholic parishes, groundwater, potential sources of geothermal energy, lighthouses, bedrock, coalfields, types of soil, public houses, climate, harbours, historic monuments and many more. See them listed on the excellent UCD web site.

Top

Historical Local Irish maps

As well as maps and map series covering the whole of Ireland, there are various maps devoted to specific locations within it.

• University College Dublin has a finder for maps of historic counties of Ireland (26 counties), a collection of Maps of the County of Wicklow including the environs of the City of Dublin and an explorer of OSI maps of 150 towns of Ireland (in the 26 counties). (Most are Town Plans which were surveyed at either five or ten foot to one mile scale between 1837 and 1896; others were expanded versions of the 25" to one mile maps.) The explorer lets you pick a town map either by navigating from a map of Ireland (above) or a list of towns organised by county (below). You can download either the whole map or a part of it.

Ordnance Survey of Ireland map of Ennis, co Clare, scale of five feet to one mile

• The Royal Irish Academy has an on-line set of digital atlases. These currently cover Derry/Londonderry, Galway, Dungarvan and Cork. They are part of a long standing atlas project in which many earlier atlases were published in hard copy. The Academy states that 'Digital editions of selected atlases are now available to explore online, free of charge' as the Irish Historic Towns Atlas Online. The towns/cities available (28 at the time of writing) are listed here.
• The Leslie Brown Collection has a large set of maps of Dublin, a collection of maps of other Irish towns, maps of four Irish towns by Mercator (dated 1633) and maps of more than 150 towns produced by The Municipal Boundary Commission appointed in 1880. (The latter in two alphabetical groups Antrim-Gorey and Gilford-Youghal. They are not as detailed as street maps.)

Mercator's map of four Irish towns c 1633

• National Museums NI has this 18th century set of maps of the principal towns and cities of Ireland.
• Oldmapsonline has links to various Irish local maps including, but not limited to, late 19th Century insurance maps which would have been available from the British Library but for their cyber attack. Key in the name of the place that you are interested in, for example these maps of Cork, Dublin, Limerick.
• Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury also has a large collection of maps of Dublin from Dublin City Archives as well as a copy of other sets from the Leslie Brown Collection.
• SWilson.info has maps of the city and county of Dublin and of Belfast, Cork and Limerick.
• dublinhistoricmaps.ie does what it says on the tin, except that it also has some modern maps and some maps of other parts of Ireland.
• The David Rumsey map collection also has a large number of county, city and town maps. (Click the down arrow under 'where' in the left side-panel to see the detailed place names.)
• The National Library of Ireland holds The Leitrim Papers 1749-1952 apparently papers relating to the estates of the Earl of Leitrim, including 18 maps of Leitrim and various books of estate maps.
• The University of Maynooth's digital library includes the Bloomfield map collection of estates of Benjamin Lord Baron Bloomfield in the King's County (Offaly) and Tipperary.
• Old maps of Cork are available on Ask about Ireland.
• Longainm.ie's historical maps include a large number of local maps, most particularly for counties Mayo, Meath, Galway and Sligo.
• Cavantownlands.ie has maps of Cavan from the Plantation of Ulster onwards.

Some Irish county Libraries have started producing local mapping systems, including the Down Survey and Ordnance Survey maps for their areas. Among these are County Clare and Sligo. There are doubtless others.

Top

On-line repositories of historical Irish maps

The main repositories containing the maps listed above are shown here in alphabetical order

• Ancestry has a collection of maps atlases and gazetteers including Ordnance Survey 6" maps, the 1855 revision to the Railway Commissioners' maps and Lewis's topographical dictionary.
• Ask about Ireland hosts Griffith's valuation maps. It also has many other maps, as shown in this search, which you could modify by adding a place name. Finding where they are all hidden is not so easy. It does have this section for primary school students on this history of maps, but most of the maps there are Flash format, which your browser will not play unless you have loaded a Flash emulator. Some other maps feature in publications held there like Scale's Hibernian Atlas.
• The Bibliothèque Nationale de France has many maps of Ireland in its collection, including but not limited to Petty's Down Survey summary maps.
• The British Library has a large collection of digitised maps, including for example many of the Down Survey maps available on Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury. However the library is currently (late 2023) struggling to recover from a major cyber attack and none of the maps is available via its web site. Two entries in the BL's blog here and here mention some other places where you can find them. The BL's Down Survey maps are available on Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury and some of the its other old maps are available on 'Old maps on-line' listed below. The British Library also has more than 1 million photos on Flickr including for example George III's topographical collection of drawn and printed maps, views and atlases produced between 1500 and 1824. It is rather hard to find what you want among such a big Flickr collection, but the BL also participates in JISCs Library hub discover (see below). This JISC search produces manuscript maps held by the British Library with subject 'Ireland' sorted oldest first. If you click on the details, quite a few of the items show a link to a photo in the BL's Flickr collection. Of course, you can vary the search terms to be more specific.
• Cambridge University Library has a digital maps collection including John Speed's Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine.
• County Clare Library has online maps.
• dublinhistoricmaps.ie has historic maps of Dublin and more.
• The geospatial library at Harvard University has a small collection of maps of Ireland, some old and some interesting.
• Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury has a large collection of maps including the Down Survey maps mentioned above. They are described here. You could try this search. To use it 1. add a keyword (eg 'Waterford'), 2. press <return>, 3. delete my initial keyword ('Limerick') and 4. filter by date if necessary.
• Not a repository but an index system is Library hub discover provided by JISC which indexes specialist and academic library contents in the UK and Ireland. It has, for example, this search of Ireland Early Maps to 1800. Usefully, given the British Library's current IT problems, it includes British Library contents and links to images on the BL's collection in Flickr.
• The Leslie Brown Collection has a large collection of historical maps from Ireland and elsewhere to view and buy.
• The Library of Congress has Irish maps and the same set is available via the UCD web site.
• Logainm.ie has this collection of historical maps.
• Map Warper explains its mission as open source "georectification" to warp or stretch maps to fit on real world map coordinates. customised with OpenStreetMap in mind. It hosts numerous maps of Ireland.
• The University of Maynooth's digital library includes the Bloomfield map collection of estates of Benjamin Lord Baron Bloomfield in the King's County (Offaly) and Tipperary.
• The National Archives (UK) has many Irish maps (you can filter by date etc) including Irish maps c.1558-c.1610 extracted from the State Papers.
• The National Library of Ireland (catalogue search for genres including maps) includes 1,206 digitised maps at the time of writing. These are mainly from the Longfield map collection, Ortelius's atlas, the Leitrim papers and Richard Bartlett's 16th century maps of Ireland.
• The National Library of Scotland has an excellent map images web site which includes facilities to view Ordnance Survey maps of Ireland and also Bartholomew's 1/4 inch (to 1 mile) series of 1940.
• The UK's National Maritime Museum has this collection of naval maps of Ireland available to view on-line.
• National Museums NI has this collection of maps 1500-1700 and this collection (mainly maps) 1700-1800.
• The Norman B Leventhal collection at Boston public library has 30 old maps with place Ireland.
• Old maps online has old maps from around the world, more than 500,000 maps in total, from numerous partner libaries including a good collection from Ireland. (You can view maps in the Old Maps On Line system (choose 'view as an overlay') or you can pick the map you want, in which case you will be directed back to the library that holds it; unfortunately maps from the British Library do not currently work using the second option. Nor do links to some of the other source libraries.)
• Princeton University Library's Digitial Maps & Geospatial Data Service has this collection of maps of Ireland.
• PRONI has a historical maps viewer.
• Queen's University Belfast has a maps section as part of its special collections. The collection includes the Ewart map collection (Ireland) and the Maps of the escheated counties of Ireland, 1609 both mentioned above.
• The Royal Irish Academy has a set of digital atlases and a Irish Historic Towns Atlas Online.
• Sligo Library has this map system.
• Stanford University Library houses historic map collections including the David Rumsey collection comprising 16th to 21st century maps, mainly from the Americas, but with a reasonable number on Ireland and also the Barry Lawrence Ruderman Map Collection featuring digital scans from the late 1400s to the 1950s which also has many maps of Ireland.
• SWilson.info is a web site compiled by Dublin based genealogist Shane Wilson with items of historical and genealogical interest related to Ireland. It has a particularly good set of maps (and also a good set of local directories).
• Tailte Éireann (incorporating the former Ordnance Survey of Ireland) has an Irish Townland and Historical Map Viewer and a general map viewer
• Trinity College Dublin built and hosts the Down Survey web site and also has its own maps and atlases collection.
• University College Dublin has an excellent digital historical map collection (guides here), a selection of OS maps of 150 Irish towns and a collection of geological maps. It's Digital Library also houses other map collections. At the time of writing the menu option to browse these collections was not working, but this search for 'maps' yields good results.

Top

Townlands and gazetteers

Gazetteers or topographical dictionaries list place names and describe geographical features such as land use, transport, population and economy. Many also cover church establisments and boundaries; some also include historical information. Unfortunately few of them go down to the level of the townland, the lowest level in the Irish system of land classification, so I have included a separate section on them.

Gazetteers

Undoubtedly the star gazetteer is the parliamentary gazetteer, ten large volumes published in 1849 and full of facts, but there are many others.

• The Topography of Ireland its miracles and wonders (originally Topographia Hibernica), by Silvester Geraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales c. 1146 – c. 1223) a description of Ireland not long after the Norman 'Strongbow' invasion here in an edition of his works translated into English and published in 1894.
• The Political Anatomy of Ireland, a demographic treatise on Ireland by Sir William Petty (who carried out the Down Survey), D Brown & R Rogers, London, 1691 (after his death).
• 'The post-chaise companion: or, Travellers directory through Ireland. ; Containing a new and accurate description of the direct and principal cross roads, with particulars of the noblemen and gentlemen's seats, cities, towns ... forming an historical & descriptive account of the kingdom. : To which is added, A dictionary, or Alphabetical tables. Shewing the distance of all the principal cities, boroughs, market and sea port towns, in Ireland from each other,' William Wilson, the author, Dublin, 1786.
• Topographica Hibernica; or, The topography of Ireland, antient and modern ; giving a complete view of the civil and ecclesiastical state of that kingdom, with its antiquities, natural curiosities, trade, manufactures, extent and population : its counties, baronies, cities, boroughs, parliamentary representation, and patronage, antient districts and their original proprietors : post, market, and fair towns : bishopricks, ecclesiastical benefices, abbies, monasteries, castles, ruins, private-seats, and remarkable buildings : mountains, riviers, lakes, mineral-springs, bays, and harbours, with the latitude and longitude of the principal places and their distances from the metropolis, and from each other : historical anecdotes, and remarkable events : the whole alphabetically arranged and carefully collected, with an appendix, containing some additional places and remarks, and several useful tables William Wenward Seward, Alex Stewart, Dublin, 1795.
• An Hibernian Atlas or, General description of the kingdom of Ireland: divided into provinces; with its sub-divisions of counties, baronies &c shewing their boundaries, extent, soil, produce, contents, measure, Members of Parliament and number of inhabitants; also the Cities, Boroughs, Villages, Mountains, Bogs, Lakes, Rivers and natural curiosities, together with the Great and Bye Post Roads, Bernard Scale (surveyor), Robert Sayer and John Bennet (publishers), London, 1776. (Also on Ask about Ireland.) Each county has a description and a coloured map on the facing page. (Also shown under historical maps of Ireland above.)
• The Hibernian Gazetteer with a concise historical and geographical account of Ireland: And an appendix descriptive of its antient topography, Seward, W. W., Thom, A., Thom, S., & Dix, E. R. M. Printed by Alex. Stuart, Dublin 1798. (Not found on line.)
• Ask about Ireland has a series of statistical surveys of Irish counties in the early 19th century on behalf of the Dublin Society (also on Hathitrust.)
• Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland adapted to the new poor-law, franchise, municipal and ecclesiastical arrangements...and presenting the results, in detail of the census of 1841, compared with that of 1831, (10 large volumes) A. Fullarton, Dublin, 1844. Arranged alphabetically, the gazetteer has an enormous wealth of information on a very large number of towns and cities of Ireland, covering the geography, population, industry, commerce, most prominent families means of transport etc.
• An improved topographical and historical Hibernian gazetteer; describing the various boroughs, baronies, buildings, &c., scientifically arranged, with an appendix of ancient names. To which is added, an introduction to the ancient and modern history of Ireland. By the Rev. G. Hansbrow, R.M. Tims, Dublin, 1835.
• A topographical dictionary of Ireland, comprising the several counties; cities; boroughs; corporate, market, and post towns; parishes and principal villages; with historical and statistical descriptions: embellished with engravings of the arms of the cities, bishoprics, corporate towns, and boroughs; and of the seals of the several municipal corporations (2nd Ed), Samuel Lewis, London, S. Lewis and co., 1849.
• The Atlas and cyclopaedia of Ireland (Patrick Weston Joyce, Murphy and McCarthy, New York, 1905) comes in two volumes. Volume 1 is described as 'A comprehensive delineation of the 32 counties : with a beautifully colored map of each, arranged alphabetically, showing over 11,000 cities, towns, villages and places of public interest'; Volume 2 as 'The general history ... : being a complete and authentic history of Ireland from the earliest ages to 1867.'
• George Henry Bassett produced seven county directories in the 1880s, Antrim, Armagh, Down, Kilkenny, Louth, Tipperary and Wexford, each with a history of the county and the usual gazetteer/directory information.

The FamilySearch wiki has a section on Ireland Gazetteers with links to other useful sites. So too does UCD.

You can see information on Irish directories here.

Townlands and place names

The Townland (of which there are more than 64,000) is the lowest unit of the Irish system of land classification. The hierarchy used to be country, province, county, barony, parish, townland. Baronies and civil parishes ceased to be used as units of civil administration in the mid-19th century. Poor law unions were established in 1838 and reorganised in the 1850s. In the 1860s, the poor law unions took responsibility for registration of births, marriages and deaths; they remain as the civil registration districts today.

Irish place names are notoriously difficult because of numerous differences in the spelling, sometimes in Gaelic, sometimes in English and using many different phonetic spellings. Indeed, the problems have been so great that the Ordnance Survey was charged with examining place name variants and standardising them. Then in 1946 a Place Names Commission was established. John Grenham has a typically good write up on Irish place names. Useful publications on Irish place names include

• A topographical index of the townlands of Ireland as included in the Down Survey of 1656-8 (The Stationery Office for The Irish Manuscripts Commission, Dublin, 1932).
• General Alphabetical Index to the Townlands and Towns, Parishes and Baronies of Ireland, Census of Ireland (from the 1851 census) (Printed by Alexander Thom) Dublin, 1861. Also the General Topographical Index etc from the 1901 census, HMSO, Dublin, 1904.
• Irish names of places, Patrick Weston Joyce, Phoenix Publishing, Dublin, volume 1 (1869) and volume 2 (1871). Also all three volumes available to download from Ask about Ireland.
• Townlands and Poor Law Unions (George Handram, Higginson Book co., Salem, Mass., 1997) which is ' a reprint of poor law union pamphlets of the General Registrar's Office, with an introduction and six appendices relating to Irish genealogical research'.

Useful databases/on-line resources include

• townlands.ie, an invaluable resource built on the not-for-profit open street map. It allows you to search for Irish places, including townlands, parishes, baronies, counties and parliamentary constituencies and to see them in context on a map.
• With roughly the same objective as townlands.ie, the 'IreAtlas Townland database', SWilson's Townland database and logainm.ie (the latter the database of the Place Names Commission). Whereas the sites above are mostly based on the townlands from the 1851 census, the Irish Genealogical Research Society's townlands index is based on the version from the 1901 census.
• Ask about Ireland's place names homepage and search on the name books produced by the Ordnance Survey.
• John Grenham's maps useful to genealogists, showing civil parishes, Roman Catholic parishes, poor law unions and the distribution of different institutions in the 1911 census and his search for place names.

Townland names and maps can be found on the OS 6" and 25" maps and index maps, on the Griffith's Survey maps and on Tailte Éireann's Irish Townland and Historical Map Viewer.

The Ireland Project has a space Understanding Irish Places and Regions.

Top