O'Donovan's Ordnance Survey, Galway Library's version

[smcarberry]

The Galway Library is developing an online version of John O'Donovan's Ordnance Survey Name Books, which is not yet
operational. I bumped into a backdoor of it today, which allows access to some of the information. The search engines do not yet work. You can get a preview of what will eventually be fully accessible. See the info below.

Please do not report the site as malfunctioning. This section of the site is not yet up and running, by design.

Sharon Carberry USA


The Galway Library's current onsite description of the database:
"In 1838, John O'Donovan was commissioned to list the place names of Ireland . For each place name, he listed variations of its name, its irish form, its translation, its situation, and a brief description. At present, we are putting the O'Donovan Place Names of Galway on the web."

Ordnance Survey Name Books, for placenames and additional local history
http://places.galwaylibrary.ie/

Use "Walter Rosengrave" in the general Google search engine to reach this
page: places.galwaylibrary.ie/asp/fullresult.asp?id=17371
Use the link which leads to the resulting page with a descriptive section on this person:
"Proprietor Walter Rosengrave, Esq.,Gort, no Agent, let to 13 tenants one having a lease and the rest at will. Yearly 32/s per acre. County Cess 3/s per acre. Tithe 1s per acre. Size of farms 2 to 10 acres. Soil rocky and part sandy. Usual crops, wheat, oats and potatoes, no bog. Tenants all Roman Catholics. Prevailing names Burk and Huston. Roseville Cottage stands in this townland. House, offices in good repair, a good orchard here Pooloonogue Spring or large pool and Gort River in this townland. Trout, perch and eel in this river. One fort in this townland. Authority, Mr. Burk, townland Rinneen."

Then, clicking on a link on that page leads to this page of all parishes in Kiltartan, with further links to use:
http://places.galwaylibrary.ie/asp/parish.asp?id=17159

[Sduddy]

The links provided by Sharon Carberry, 14 years ago, are no longer working, so I did a search for “O’Donovan’s Field Name Books Galway Library” and found this link: http://places.webworld.org. Click on ” list of civil parishes in Galway”. This leads to a way of finding the descriptive remarks for any civil parish in Galway: http://places.webworld.org/parish/list.
I tried using it for the parish of Beagh, and found that the remarks describe rivers, lakes and islands and places other than the“official” townlands that were eventually set down: http://places.webworld.org/parish/984

The “BeaghRootsGalway” site (https://beaghrootsgalway.weebly.com) gives helpful background information for the Ordnance Survey Name Books: https://beaghrootsgalway.weebly.com/o-d ... 1830s.html

It would be great if the descriptive remarks for the townlands of Clare were available too. All I can find, so far, is this piece on Sixmilebridge : https://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/cocla ... enames.htm.

Where can I find the other Co Clare parishes? Help needed, please.
I'm not looking for the letters by O'Donovan and Curry describing the antiquities they found in each parish.

Sheila

[smcarberry]

Sheila, not to worry. The digital version of the name book commentary done by O'Donovan is available on askaboutireland.ie, but so that folks are aware that all 32 counties were and are not available, here is the description accessed today on the Royal Academy website:

The Royal Irish Academy holds a large collection of manuscript OS Letters comprising correspondence between John O’Donovan (1806-1861) and other researchers employed on the survey and OS head office staff. OS Letters exist for 29 Irish counties. The exceptions are Antrim, Cork and Tyrone. The contents of this collection have been catalogued and records are accessible on the Manuscripts Catalogue. The Letters have been dis-bound, conserved and microfilmed and the set was digitised in 2012. This work was completed under the International Access to Academy Library Holdings Project, graciously funded by Atlantic Philanthropies. The digital versions of the Letters are accessible on www.askaboutireland.ie (link is external) where they complement the digital version of Griffith’s Valuation and the OS Name Books.

https://www.ria.ie/library/catalogues/s ... nd-archive

I haven't tried using the Ask About Ireland website as a resource for the Name Books, and a quick use of its search engine failed me just now (only one cup of coffee so far today, but wanted to get this posted for you). Maybe you can post a direct link to the Name Books when you access it.

Sharon C.

[Sduddy]

Hi Sharon

Thank you very much for taking so much trouble with my query.
I’ve looked at the askaboutireland.ie Name Books, but what I am getting is stuff about antiquities – not the descriptive remarks on townlands, which is what I want.
I’ve often mentioned Thomas Coffey’s book on the history of the parish of Inchcronan (Crusheen), in particular chapter nine which is entitled, “Notes from O’Donovan’s Descriptive Remarks on the Townlands of Inchicronan ‘Field Name Books’” (pp.28-46). The material in that chapter interests me very much, especially as Coffey, in the opening paragraph, says, “He [John O’Donovan] visited every townland in the county and submitted descriptive remards on each”, and this statement leads me to believe that there is the same kind of information on the other parishes in Clare which Coffey must have seen and which must be available somewhere. The strange thing, however, is that this information is never alluded to by anyone, except Thomas Coffey – hence my great curiosity and my always going on about it.

Sheila

[smcarberry]

To ensure the broadest possible dissemination of the current status for accessibility to the Ordnance Survey-era Name Books, associated Letters, and any related treatments (such as a version produced under the direction of Fr. O'Flanagan) on a very "granular" level of place names known in the era before Griffiths Valuation (for Clare, mid 1850s): I am pointing to a discussion elsewhere on this Forum which followed later the same day after my reply to Sheila Duddy made above in this thread. The other thread is on screen/page 45 of a much longer ongoing exploration of various topics that started for a McNamara of Glendree at http://www.ourlibrary.ca/phpbb2/viewtop ... &start=675:

in going back to the askaboutireland website of the NLI to obtain the Griffith Valuation acreage for my reconciliation project, I saw that to the right of "Griffith's Names" and "Griffith's Places" is "Name Books":

Without reading the fine print on the "Name Books" page, I searched for "Glendree" and "County Clare" and received this message:

"Please note that the Name Books and Letters service is under development; the Name Books and Letters are currently being scanned."

https://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith ... unty=CLARE

Which explains why the attached pdf documents for Glendree didn't open properly. The Name Book search page states the following.

Please note this section is under construction.

On this form, you can search for entries in the Ordnance Survey Name Books and Letters, published between 1824 and 1842 as part of the first complete mapping survey of Ireland. The results will show you a list of places in our Name Books and Letters Collection that match your search and will give you the option to view the original Name Book or Letter page, a PDF version of the same document and a map showing the location of the place.

[Sduddy]

Hi Sharon

Thank you for making that reference to the research done by Jimbo on this topic.

The information in the Field Name Books, when we get it online (hopefully), will contain a small amount of information on each townland, but, small though it might be, it will help to make up for the dearth of records (that have survived) for that era (c. 1839).

As you know there is very helpful information available on clarelibrary.ie on every townland in the county, but I’ve noticed that there is a third external link made available for Ballycasey Beg and Ballycasey More in Drumline parish: https://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/cocla ... ey_beg.htm, i.e. information collected by the Clare Townlands Fieldnames Survey: https://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/cocla ... y_info.htm. Reading through that information (Well Done to whoever compiled it), I notice that there is no reference to the Ordnance Survey Field Name Books, and this makes me think that they have not been readily available to researchers. It's good to hear from Jimbo that the material is being scanned and will be available sometime.

Sheila