The earliest six-inch Ordnance Survey mapping of Ireland was undertaken in 1824 to determine townland boundaries and acreages as a means of equalising local taxation. Thanks to the zeal and vision of a small group of military officers, and the devoted labours of many soldiers and civilians, they survey soon evolved into an all-purpose cartographic record, making Ireland the first country in the world to enjoy the benefit of published maps depicting its entire territory at a scale large enough to show every house and every field.
This book described the making of the original survey and its successive revisions against the social and economic background of the time; it also examines various subsidiary cartographic developments including the production of large-scale town lands and a national mosaic of one-inch topographical sheets together with the abortive scheme for a government supported geographical memoir intended to act as a commentary on the Survey's maps.
A final chapter described the re-survey of Ireland at the larger sales of 1:2500 for facilitate the ambitious land reforms initiated in the 1880s and goes on to epitomise the later history of Ordnance Survey mapping in both the north and south of Ireland up to and beyond the Second World War.
Contents:
List of Plates
List of Figures
Abbreviations
1. Making a Start
2. The Military System and its Critics 1824-1883
3. The Six-Inch Map 1833-1846
4. Topography Ancient and Modern
5. Colby and Larcom, the Final Phase 1843-1847
6. A Slight Taste of Devolution 1847-1854
7. A Stiff Dose of Assimilation 1854-1898
8. Postscript
Appendix A. The Spring Rice report
Appendix B. Colby's 'Instructions for the interior of Ireland 1825'
Appendix C. Tide-stations and sea-levels
Appendix D. Irish six-inch contour surveys 1839-57
Appendix E. Latitudes and longitudes of county origins
Appendix F. A note on the dating of Irish Ordnance Survey maps
Appendix G. Select list of maps and plans
Appendix H. Published annual reports of the Ordnance Survey
Index
Review:In a new preface to this second edition of the book, the author summarises more recent research and writing on the history of the Irish Ordnance Survey.
... a very carefully researched and extremely detailed study of an exceedingly complex opera
