Early Maps of Ireland

The Magic of Old Maps

We’ve done quite a few posts over the years about old maps – we are both fascinated by them. So I’ve decided to draw all those posts together into a new Menu Page, so you can easily find any post you’re interested in.

Several posts went into detail about maps from the Elizabethan period. The Elizabethans were map-makers and they had a special interest in drawing up maps of Ireland – to confiscate tracts of land from the rebellious Irish and assign them to colonisers. Jobson was the cartographer who mapped Munster: two posts detail the maps drawn up for that purpose.

There’s a mysterious map in the British Public Record office – nobody knows who did it, but it was obviously done in the period following the Battle of Kinsale in 1601. While some of the elements are obvious, others are not, and pouring over a map like this raises as many questions as it answers. I titled the two posts Elizabethan Map of a Turbulent West Cork.

Two posts, Mapping West Cork, drew on maps from the David Rumsay Map Collection – a man who has done the world a great service by collecting and digitising maps from all over the world. These are very early maps by famous cartographers Mercator (done in the late 1500s) and Blaeu (from his 1655 Atlas). I’ve updated this post recently.

John Speed’s map, dating to 1611, although largely based on Mercator’s work, is more detailed and adds all kinds of interesting details about people and cities.

Robert’s post Roaringwater Bay in 1612 is about the Dutch Pirate Map. As he says in his post:     The thing that sets the 1612 map apart, however, is that it was made in secret, and largely from surveys only carried out at sea. Also, it was specifically intended to enable a Dutch fleet to assail the pirate strongholds which became numerous around the area from Baltimore to Crookhaven, centred on Roaringwater Bay and ideal for forays into the wider Atlantic trade routes.

A series of three posts, all written by Robert, explored the world of the Down Survey – conducted by William Petty under the instructions of Oliver Cromwell, and like the Jobson maps, done for the purposes of assigning land to colonisers. 

After an introductory post, Robert went into details about West Cork and then, in a third post, looked at Kerry. He is planning more in this series.

Finally, there’s Griffith’s Valuation – a series of detailed maps done by Sir Richard Griffith in the 19th century for the purpose of putting values on every square perch of land. Robert wrote about Griffith in The Rocky Road to Nowhere, and I used the Valuation in my post What the Forest Was Hiding.

We will update The Magic of Old Maps page as we write any new posts. I am leaving you with a new map – it’s the joint work of Robert and Peter Clarke, and the original hangs in the Bank House, Ballydehob’s Tourist Information Centre.

If you want to browse the David Rumsey map collection for yourself, it’s here.

Mapping West Cork, Part 1, Updated

This post was originally published several years ago, but I have edited and updated it, so am giving it another airing.

Old maps are magical places to get lost in. Pouring over them, trying to identify what I know now, attempting to look at the territory with a seventeenth or eighteenth century mindset – well, several hours have gone by and I realise it’s dinner time. I’m going to share some of my favourites with you in a couple of posts. Mostly, the maps I am using are from the marvellous David Rumsey Map Collection where the maps are free to use for non-commercial use under the Creative Commons license. We are very grateful to you, David Rumsey – what a service to mankind!

The first map here is by the famous Gerhard Mercator (1512-1594) and Iodocus Hondius (1563 to 1612) and it was published in an Atlas in 1607, after Mercator’s death. The map, therefore, predates the Atlas and was probably done in the late 1500s.

Who was Mercator? This is him, courtesy of Britannica, and his influence on mapmaking was incalculable – he really was the father of modern cartography.

In the 1500s, globe-making was a precise and difficult art. Mapmakers often etched their maps onto paper that they then painstakingly pasted onto paper mache spheres. Old maps had problems, however. Mapping a three-dimensional globe onto a two-dimensional map always involves some distortions, but early maps had serious issues for navigators. They were mostly elliptical and struggled to capture the curvature of the Earth for sailors who were plotting a course. Sailors using them were constantly twisting, curving, and recalculating to compensate for their maps’ deficiencies.

In 1569, Mercator developed a better, more accurate projection. Although the execution was difficult, the basic idea was simple: Imagine a globe with a paper cylinder wrapped around it — Mercator projected that globe onto the paper and then unwrapped it. He then expanded degrees of latitude as they approached the poles, which distorted land, but allowed the directions to be clearer.

https://www.vox.com/2015/3/5/8151303/gerardus-mercator-maps

We can recognise some things in this map and not others. Croke is Crookhaven, Doun Logh is Dunlough (or Three Castle Head) and Doun boy is Dunboy Castle home of the O’Sullivan Beares. We can also see Roße – this is Rosscarbery, with the symbol of a church, and Kynsale. But after that I was stumped. However, one clever reader (thank you, Philippa Barry!), when I published this first, added Currently doing some reading on Bantry and O’Sullivan Bere, so getting familiar with placenames. In the first map Kylmyiunoge might be Kilmacomoge, Ardhey is Ardea Castle on the Kenmare River. Looks like Timeoleague is in there too.

The second map is from 1655 and it’s from Joan Blaeu’s Atlas Major. Blaeu, a Dutch cartographer, lived from 1596 to 1673 and this map is from his Atlas Maior of 1665, considered one of the greatest achievements ever in Atlas publishing. It was also the most expensive book you could buy in the 17th century – worth a year’s wages for a skilled craftsman. The first thing we notice, of course, is that this version is in colour, but you could also buy an uncoloured version for a hundred guilders less. Given printing capabilities of the time, each copy must have been hand-coloured.

There is much more detail now, and more recognisable elements. It’s a wonderful record of what the major sites were then – sites which nowadays hardly exist, or exist as ruins. Let’s take it from east to west.

I recognise Dunowen and Dundeedy, and Ringer must mean the area now known as Ring. The letter C denoted a Castle (or Manor House) as in C Perles. or Castle of Pearls, which is Dun Na Séad (Fort of the Jewels), the O’Driscoll Castle at Baltimore. But what is C Ray? There was a tower house at Castlefreke built by Randal Oge Barry in 15th century, maybe that’s it? And, even more intriguingly, what is C Never?

Moving on to Roaringwater Bay and its hinterland, we find Artenay, now known as Ardintenant Castle, one of the ruins of what was once a string of O’Mahony Castles. Ardintenant was the home of the Taoiseach, or clan chief, which is why it would be marked on the map. Other O’Mahony Castles are Dunmanus (Donemay), Dunlough (Dow lough) and Leamcon. Territories of the McCarthy’s, the O’Donovans, Sir Peter Carew and O’Mahonys are given, but also an O’Coner clan, about whom I have no knowledge. The Sheep’s Head is divided into Moenter vary (Muinter Bhaire) at the north end and Shepes head at the south end. Mizen Head has already acquired its name, although I suspect Eragh is a form of Ivaha, the old name for the Mizen Peninsula. Could C Skyrt be Castle Donovan – no other castle is located in this general area?

Finally, on to Beara – we immediately recognise Bear Island, or the Great Island, as it was known historically, and Dunboy Castle, as well as Dursey Island. C Lauras, may be Lauragh, although Lauragh is on the north, not the south side of Beara. I need an expert here, to find other place names that equate to modern sites. So take a browse dear readers, and let me know what you find.

Mapping West Cork, Part 2: John Speed

The Centre of Ireland

We have written previously about the sacred site reputed to be the “Centre of Ireland”. In other words the midpoint of the country: that’s the whole of the island of course – the division into Ireland and Northern Ireland is an artificial designation barely a century old. It’s a many-centuries-old tradition that the Hill of Uisneach, in Co Westmeath, is regarded as the geographical centre of this whole island and has been regarded as a major ritual site for the assembly of the ruling families and debate on the lore of the land.

We visited the hill in October 2016, while preparations were being made to celebrate autumn festivities there. In the picture above, you can see the Godess Eriu being decorated. It was she who gave Ireland its name – Eire. Before you read on about Uisneach’s other claim to fame, have a look at my post from six years ago, here. My friend Michael read this post and sent me a fascinating article on the subject of ‘the geographical centre of Ireland‘. Please read it – and, if you understand the technicalities of the process, please let me know!

. . . The calculation to find the exact geographic centre of Ireland was carried out by OSi using the most up-to-date, openly available geospatial data and widely used geographic information system (GIS) technology.  Specifically, OSi used Esri’s Mean Centre Point tool in ArcMap and features data for the Republic of Ireland from its own open-source data set, OSi Admin Areas Ungeneralised, as well as an openly available OSNI Largescale County Boundaries data set from Land & Property Services of Northern Ireland (LPS). The Northern Ireland features were reprojected from an Irish National Grid coordinate system to line up with the OSi features for the republic of Ireland (ITM), enabling the datasets to be processed together.  In just a few short minutes, the coordinates 633015.166477, 744493.046768 were revealed, providing one scientific answer to an age-old question . . .

Ordnance Survey of Ireland Data February 25th 2022

To get to the salient point, the Ordnance Survey of Ireland is rejecting tradition in favour of science! They claim the true centre of this island is a little distance from Uisneach:

. . . According to a new calculation from Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi), the centre of the island of Ireland actually lies at the Irish Transverse Mercator (ITM) coordinates 633015.166477, 744493.046768, near the community of Castletown Geoghegan, between the towns of Athlone and Mullingar.  This scientifically-calculated centre point is situated, as the crow flies, approximately 31km east of the Hill of Berries, 35km east-south-east of the townland of Carnagh East and a mere 5km south-east of the Hill of Uisneach, Loughnavalley, Co. Westmeath . . .

Ordnance Survey of Ireland Data February 25th 2022

Whilst acknowledging that ” . . . Over time, new data, advancing technologies and new techniques could generate different versions of the truth . . .” the Ordnance Survey throws out a challenge to tradition. I’m throwing that challenge right back!

If I was going to set out to find the geographical centre of Ireland, I would take a large map and pin it up on the wall:

Then I would throw a dart at it – aiming for the middle! I’d get somewhere near, for sure. In fact, there’s a little red dot on this map – just under Mullingar: this is where Uisneach is located. But, if you want something more technical, might you work out a centre based on distances from the extremities? Here are some possibilities:

However, this map does rather show up the inadequacies of this methodology! So, what does Uisneach have to recommend it – and justify the long-held tradition? Well, it does have a large rock, known as ‘The Cat’s Stone’ . . .

This enormous erratic is also known as ‘The Navel’, which is quite a clue as far as I’m concerned. so, how might our ancestors have come to this conclusion – by maps?

This is known as Ptolemy’s Map of Ireland. It is often said to date from 140AD, but is in fact a Greek copy dating from around 1400AD. Ptolemy did produce maps: he didn’t visit the distant locations, but based his projections on information recorded by sailors who explored the corners of the world.

This map of the British Isles has a similar heritage. Again, you could throw a dart at the centre of Ireland on either of these maps and get pretty close to Uisneach!

This map is somewhat later (1325) and is far more accurate. It’s interesting to me that it shows the fabled islands of Brasil and Demar, mentioned in accounts of St Brendan’s sixth century voyage. We can also wonder at the fact that the only place marked on the south western part of Ireland here is Dorsie (Dursey). But none of these early maps – while fascinating – can support the observation that anyone living in those days could calculate the ‘centre’ of Ireland by looking on a map!

Examining the area around Uisneach on the earliest Ordnance Survey maps (above) gives an idea of the earthworks which were considered important to record in the area. I’m wondering what the ‘cave’ is that’s indicated lower right in the top extract?

Interestingly, in the UK, the village of Meriden is traditionally said to mark the centre of England. But the UK Ordnance Survey has also challenged this.

Preparing for the autumn ceremony at Uisneach Hill, above. We can ponder and argue on the claims to be able to locate the centre of an island (and it’s certainly fascinating to do so) but – while thanking my friend Michael for stimulating this thought process – perhaps the UK Ordnance Survey should be given the final word here:

. . . The truth is, that there can be no absolute centre for a three dimensional land mass sitting on the surface of a sphere and surrounded by the ebb and flow of sea water. If you consider the movement of tides on a beach, the shape of the object will change on a constant basis. Another contributing factor is how far you consider the coast to stretch up river estuaries. Different projections, scales and methods of calculation will all produce different results . . .

Ordnance Survey UK 2014