The primary ever large-scale survey of a complete nation was began practically 200 years in the past. From 1825 to 1846 the Irish Ordnance Survey undertook a extremely detailed survey of the entire of Eire in an effort to create maps primarily on the 6 inch scale.
To have a good time 200 years of Irish mapping the College of Limerick and Queen’s College Belfast has created OS200. The OS200 web site is a digital archive of Eire’s Ordnance Survey which permits anybody to browse and discover the Ordnance Survey’s First Version Six-Inch Maps, the OS Memoirs, Letters and Title Books.
The maps themselves are exquisitely detailed and fantastically drawn. Due to the digitization work by the OS200 mission now you can discover these unique Ordnance Survey maps of Eire within the closest element as interactive maps. If you’re Irish, or have ever visited Eire, you possibly can have hours of enjoyable exploring locations you realize on the OS maps, as they seemed 200 years in the past. You possibly can have simply as a lot enjoyable shopping the Ordnance survey Title Books.
In addition to spending years scientifically surveying Eire the Ordnance Survey despatched out brokers of the Topographical Division to gather and compile lists of the historic types of place-names to find out the right place-name labels for use on the maps. These Title Books checklist place-names (with English translations and alternate spellings) but in addition present particulars on the individuals who reside at every place, the individuals’s religions, who owns the land, and who leases the land. It additionally lists data on the varieties of crops grown and the situation of the soil. These non-etymological particulars trace at one of many unique functions of the map -to assist the British authorities levy native taxes.
The broader governmental goals for making a nationwide map of Eire are additionally obvious within the Memoirs. In addition to the geographical surveys and place-name collections the Ordnance Survey employees had been required to collect further data “on social and financial situations, … the panorama, topography, nature, geology, historic monuments and antiquities, estates, mills, infrastructure, individuals and tradition …, communications and (present) ‘options for enchancment'”. These memoirs present an interesting glimpse into native life in Eire within the early nineteenth Century.
