Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?

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Sduddy
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Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?

Post by Sduddy » Sun Mar 18, 2018 11:43 am

Having read a little on the making of the 1842 Ordnance Survey map, I would like to read a little about the making of the later 25-inch (now called 1:2500), which began in 1888 and continued until 1913. I love the 1842 map, but I love this one even more, mainly because the pathways are marked in. The sappers who did the work for this map were still mentioned in conversations when I was a child in the 1950s. I think they were soldiers in the British army, and I have a vague idea that they were allowed to transfer to the R.I.C. (Royal Irish Constabulary) afterwards. I think that local people may have been employed temporarily by the Ordnance Survey team as it moved from place to place. I am more interested in the social history aspect of that whole process than in the technicalities, but would welcome anything at all to read to this stage. Richard Kirwan’s book, ‘If Maps could Speak’, gives only a couple of sentences to the making of the 1:2500 (p 106):
This map series began its life in 1888 at the height of the agrarian reforms in Ireland. Landlords needed very detailed maps showing the area of each field, no matter how small, to transfer ownership of land to tenant farmers. The six-inch was not accurate enough. It would have been necessary for landlords to produce maps at their own expense if it had not been for the magnanimity of the then Director of Ordnance Survey, Major General Charles Wilson. He had inordinate sympathy with the landlords and tried to reduce their financial burden by recommending a new national series at a scale of 25 inches to the mile… Twelve hundred men produced twenty thousand maps that covered Ireland between 1888 and 1913. (end of quote).

I don’t mind if the recommended book, or article, does not mention Co. Clare. I can extrapolate from it for Co. Clare.

Sheila

smcarberry
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Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?

Post by smcarberry » Tue Mar 20, 2018 12:17 pm

I myself have nothing on this subject, but perhaps the lecturer involved with this event might be a resource:

Friday 23 March: Surveying Heritage: A landscape archaeology of the Ordnance Survey in Ireland, with Keith Lilley. Part of the National Monuments and Buildings Record NI lecture series. Host and venue: PRONI, Titanic Boulevard, Belfast. 1pm–2pm. Free. No booking required.
[Listed this week at IrelandGenealogyNews.com]

Sduddy
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Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?

Post by Sduddy » Tue Mar 20, 2018 4:09 pm

Hi Sharon

Thanks for noting that and sending it to me. I looked it up online and found that it deals with the first half of the 18th century, which is not exactly what I want just now, but I will keep the name of the lecturer in mind.
I had a flash of inspiration after I posted my query: I will write to Richard Kirwan and ask him if he has anymore on the making of the 25 inch, and I will explain the angle I’m looking for. I must say I would love to get a reply - I think his approach to the subject would be conversational, rather than scholarly, which would be perfect for me. I’ve read ‘Exploring the History and Heritage of Irish Landscapes’ by Patrick J. Duffy (Maynooth Research Guides for Irish Local History, No. 12, published by Four Courts Press, 2007) and ‘The Irish Ordnance Survey – History, Culture and Memory’ by Gillian M. Doherty (Four Courts Press, 2004), but, while both are interesting of course, they are not what I want. What I want is a bespoke article written specially for me!

The making of the 6 inch1842 map is so rich in possibilities for researchers, I can see why they do not look beyond it to the 25 inch. Thomas Colby, who was appointed superintendent of the Ordnance Survey in Ireland in 1824, had complete faith in the worthiness of the project - so much so that he went madly over budget (when questioned on expenditure, his mode of defense was to attack – saying that if he had not been rushed along in the beginning he would have made fewer costly mistakes). He included, for a while, the making of a “Memoir”: a gathering of information on history, culture, economy, geology, religious practices, languages, antiquities, and industrial and agricultural potential. The budget for this he estimated at £500 per parish. The idea was soon abandoned, however - the budget for Templemore parish in Co. Derry, alone, having come to £1700, which even he could not countenance. But the resulting volume (or volumes?) of material from this short-lived project, quite apart from anything else, has provided a wealth of material for researchers, especially in the north of Ireland where it had its short life.

Sheila

Lucille
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Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?

Post by Lucille » Wed Mar 21, 2018 11:16 am

Hi Sheila,

I have been working on (pottering around, more like!) that very subject for a couple of years, and like you, I have found almost nothing written on the subject. I was framing the research of the Ordnance Survey on College House in Ennis, which was taken over by the OS as their headquarters for their work in the mid-west when the Erasmus Smith School closed (date in my notes, but not my head!!) until they left again in 1913. Apparently it was not their first choice and they would have preferred to be in Limerick.

I was most interested in the people involved - the 1901 and 1911 censuses gave me their names and some indication of their social standing - but obviously I need to know about their work and there I was coming up with a big blank. Peter Beirne, in the Local Studies Centre in Ennis, has been keeping an eye out for me for any mentions in the newspapers and I have gone through some of the Clare Champions and Clare Journals for the relevant years.

One book I read, name escapes me but I can chase it up if you are interested, was by an Englishman whose grand uncles had worked in the OS during that period, and in Clare for some time. He recounted how he had gone into the OS office in Ennis, but they are only interested in current activities and were of no help to him. I have planned, for some time, to contact the OS here in Dublin and see can they help, perhaps by making contact with some retired staff who may have knowledge / interest in that period. It's going to be 2019 before I get to that however!

I presume you have read "A Paper Landscape" by J.H. Andrews, about the original survey, but it really does make you want to know what happened next. Will you let me know if Richard Kirwan comes up with anything please.

Thanks

Lucille Ellis

Sduddy
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Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?

Post by Sduddy » Wed Mar 21, 2018 2:30 pm

Hi Lucille

Thanks very much. I’m so pleased to know I’m not entirely alone in this odd interest of mine. Yes, I’ve written to Richard Kirwan, saying ‘Dear Mr. Kirwan, thank you for ‘If Maps could Speak’, but what you have written in Chapter 10 on the making of the 25 inch is not enough – I want to know more (s.a.e. enclosed)’ – or words to that effect. How can he possibly not reply?

In the meantime, if you find the name of that book please send it to me.
How do the Ordnance Survey team describe themselves in the census? Do they call themselves Engineers? Are they all staying in the Erasmus Smith School, or is that their workplace?
The labourers’ cottages (as they were called), which were provided by the Board of Works, do not appear on the 25 inch map, as far as I can make out, which makes me think the map for Co. Clare had been completed by 1890, or so. Someone might know a bit more about the dates for the building of those cottages.

Yes, I’ve read J.H. Andrews*, but he communicates little or no enthusiasm for the 25 inch map. In fact he is a bit scathing about it when he deals with it in his Post Script - chapter VIII: ‘Judged by the highest cartographic standards the results lacked interest and distinction. For cadastral purposes, however, they were perfectly serviceable, and (as the Survey hinted in its annual report) a published map on so large a scale was a luxury for which an impoverished nation like the Irish might well be grateful.’
But for me, who does not know what ‘cadastral’ means and cares little, the 25 inch is a wonderful map and I want to know a bit about those people who looked at wells, lime-kilns, sheep-folds, stepping stones, “Giant’s Graves”*, and measured them all so carefully.

Sheila

*J.H. Andrews (again not very impressed) says “it is probably a good rule to be more suspicious of the antiquities in the new maps than of those in the old”.

P.S. By the way your ‘Women of Clare’ is really good. The slimness of the book belies the huge amount of research it must have involved. I’m pleased that you didn’t confine your research to the women alone but gave so much on the families that they came from, as with Hannah Villiers Boyd and the Ralahine Vandeleurs, for instance. This makes the book a great resource indeed.

Jimbo
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Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?

Post by Jimbo » Thu Mar 22, 2018 8:27 am

Hi Sheila,

According to the Siftings column of the Irish American Weekly (see below), the Ordnance Survey for County Clare had been completed by 1907. So the Ordnance Survey team would most likely have been still working on the survey in 1901.

For a shortcut to find these men in the 1901 census, do an advanced search for any male born in Scotland living in County Clare. Of the resulting 36 Scotsmen, six were working for the ordnance survey department:

https://tinyurl.com/Scottish-Surveyors-in-Clare (check the box "Show all information" to view occupation & place of birth)

The married men were in separate households and you can deduce from the birth locations of their children how long they had been living in County Clare. Using the same occupations as the Scots in the 1901 census, you can no doubt find a few Irish or English born surveyors. But I've read somewhere that the primary administrators (including surveyors) of the British Empire were the Scots.

A quick edit: just did a search of the 1901 census in County Clare for occupation "ordnance" and there were a total of 28 surveyors: 10 from England; 11 from Ireland; 6 from Scotland; 1 from Canada. So for much for my theory! Quite a large team and expense to create this map.

Good luck.

Jimbo
Attachments
Siftings, Page 6 Irish American Weekly of 7 Sept 1907.jpg
Siftings, Page 6 Irish American Weekly of 7 Sept 1907.jpg (125.15 KiB) Viewed 35888 times

Sduddy
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Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?

Post by Sduddy » Thu Mar 22, 2018 11:04 am

Hi Jimbo

Thank you very much for all that work and for finding that informative newspaper article. I’m very pleased. I thought my query would sink quickly and quietly to the bottom of the page.
If the officers, typically, were from Scotland, I think it might have been a historical thing. The “Office of the Ordnance” existed in Britain from the late fourteenth century. Its main business was the sapping (weakening) of fortifications (hence the word “Sapper”). Rachel Hewitt* says “over the course of the eighteenth century the Board of Ordnance employees produced a collection of large-scale surveys of specific spots in the country that were demarcated for the erection of forts and harbours”. But when the Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland and the battle of Culloden, in particular, showed that whole stretches of the Highlands were inaccessible, David Watson, an Ordnance Engineer, pleaded “‘the Benefit [which] must arise from the protecting the Highlands by the Regular Troops’ and the need to ‘aquir[e] a perfect knowledge of the Country’” and so “’a Resolution [was] taken for making a Compleat and accurate Survey of Scotland’”. Charge of this was given to William Roy. The last portrait of David Watson shows him pointing to his crowning glory: a military survey of the Highlands (David Watson left all his mathematical instruments to Captain William Roy). It was from these beginnings that the Ordnance Survey was finally established in 1791 and then extended to Ireland in 1824.
Or is the reason a lot simpler? Was there a school of Engineering in Scotland at the time that Edinburgh was the hub of Enlightenment? Somebody might have the answer.

Whatever the reason, in 1824, Richard Wellesley, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (and brother of the Duke of Wellington), declared that “an Irish map ‘cannot be executed by Irish engineers and Irish agents of any description. Neither science, nor skill, nor diligence, nor discipline, nor integrity, sufficient for such work can be found in Ireland’”. On May 9, 1825, “the Derry Journal noted that five officers ‘with a detachment of the royal sappers and miners, have arrived in this city, to commence the survey of Ireland’”. The survey began in Derry and worked its way southward. Did the later (1888) 25 inch also begin in Derry?

None of that, though, fully explains why the officers of the Ordnance Survey were still, in 1901, after all that time, typically Scottish. It’s interesting.

Sheila

* all the quotes are from "Map of a Nation" by Rachel Hewitt (Granta 2010)

Sduddy
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Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?

Post by Sduddy » Thu Mar 22, 2018 4:41 pm

Hi Jimbo

I did a bit of homework and looked that 1901 census - see attached.
I entered “Ordnance” and looked at those 28 people, and sure enough, as you say, there are only 6 from Scotland.
Then I entered “Sapper” and got 3 more, but none from Scotland.
Then I entered “Engineer” and got 3 more, who, of all the Engineers listed, are the only ones definitely in Ordnance Survey, and none are from Scotland.

Sheila
Attachments
OrdnanceSurvey1901.doc
(33.5 KiB) Downloaded 704 times

Lucille
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Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?

Post by Lucille » Thu Mar 22, 2018 6:53 pm

Hi Sheila

That book was "Mapping the Past: Searching for five brothers at the edge of empire" by Charles Drazin.

I got the book through the public library system so you should be able to access it too.

Thanks for your kind words about my book. I enjoyed writing it.

Lucille

Sduddy
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Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?

Post by Sduddy » Fri Mar 23, 2018 5:12 pm

Thanks for looking that up Lucille.

Sheila

Jimbo
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Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?

Post by Jimbo » Sat Mar 24, 2018 12:19 am

Hi Sheila,

Thank you very much for a bit of history behind the ordnance survey maps with their origin in Scotland. I found further reading on William Roy, the "Founder of the Ordnance Survey", also to be interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Roy

Even though only six of the revised total of 34 surveyors were from Scotland, I suspect that they along with a few of the more senior English surveyors were running the show. All of the Scottish surveyors were over 40 years old and thus with lots of experience. The 14 Irish surveyors were all under the age of 30 years, except for two. And the Irish born Michael Conway, aged 45, an "Engineer and Land Valuer" may have just been doing private surveying work for landlords - he was living further away from the others in Ennis or Killaloe which raises my suspicion whether or not he was associated with the Ordnance survey. The young Irish surveyors were likely to have been the "boy with the clipboard and reflector tripod" as Paddy Casey described in your post about a scene from Glenomera. That is not say that their lives would be any less interesting; their surveying skills could have been put to good use especially with WWI, the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil war in their near future.

I did find one more Scottish surveyor who worked for the Ordnance Survey in County Clare who is not included in the 1901 census. In Ennis Cathedral, the Fourth Station of the Cross was presented by Mary Hartigan in memory of her beloved husband John Hartigan who died on the 1st of April 1896. John Hartigan drowned on a fishing excursion when his boat was tipped at Ballybeg Lake near Ennis. He drowned along with two other men including Inverness born J.R. Roy of the Ordnance Survey department. There was only one survivor. Their story is told in fascinating detail in a 2009 presentation by the Clare Roots Society: "Ennis Cathedral: The Building and Its People" and is located as a download on the Ennis parish website here:

http://www.ennisparish.com/parish-churc ... dral/?on=1

The widow of J.R. Roy remained in County Clare. One of her two sons John Robin Roy died in WWI and is listed in the County Clare war dead:

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclar ... _war_2.pdf

Perhaps the Ordnance Surveyor "J.R. Roy" was also named "John Robin Roy"? In those days, occupations were frequently passed down from father to son. I would assume this would also be true for surveyors as evident in your 1901 census listing with the Scottish surveyor Joseph Grehan and his son Daniel Grehan. Perhaps you can find a family connection (grandson? great grandson?) between John Robin Roy and the founder of the Ordnance Survey, William Roy?

Sduddy
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Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?

Post by Sduddy » Sat Mar 24, 2018 11:13 am

Amazing. Are you telling me that the fourth Station of the Cross brought you from Captain William Roy to his descendant (very possibly) who drowned, poor man, in Ballybeg lake?
Words fail me - at the moment.

Sheila

Sduddy
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Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?

Post by Sduddy » Sat Mar 24, 2018 5:25 pm

Yes, the record of the death, on Apr. 01, 1896, of John Robin Roy, Clerk in Ordnance Survey, shows that he was aged 40, married, and that he died by drowning at Ballybeg Lake.
Wouldn’t be great to find that he was a descendant of William Roy - but Roy seems to be a very common name in Scotland and there’s oceans of work involved in tracing back from John Robin, born 1856, to one hundred years earlier – and there’s probably not even a way of doing that. It would probably be easier to go forward and see if his son, also John Robin, who died in 1918 in the Great War at age 38, had any children who have passed on the history of the family - I'm having a vision of one of those bibles with christenings listed at the beginning!

I returned to my homework and looked at the 1911 census, which shows some changes in Ordnance Survey personnel in Co. Clare, but little or no change in the total number, and I’ve revised my earlier document (attached). So it looks like the Ordnance Survey was still working in Co. Clare in 1911 – probably winding things up.

Sheila
Attachments
OrdnanceSurvey1901.doc
(36.5 KiB) Downloaded 719 times

Jimbo
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Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?

Post by Jimbo » Tue Mar 27, 2018 3:09 am

Hi Sheila,

Good work on your listing of surveyors!

I think you are correct that since Roy is such a common surname in Scotland that there would unlikely be a family connection. Plus, William Roy died in 1790 and from his London address he was probably a wealthy man; his sons (if any) would have had plenty of opportunities beyond being a surveyor.

Surprised that in the 1911 census there was still such a large surveyor team in County Clare. What were these men doing? The article about the status of the updated Ordnance Survey from 1907 mentioned an annual update by the Ordnance Survey called the "Blue Book". If you could get a copy of this annual Blue Book hopefully it might give you details on OS activities in County Clare. Finding a copy might prove difficult as from the below 1906 article it appears that many of these "Blue Books" ended up in the rubbish bin or for kindling the fire!
Attachments
Gailic American (NY) 28 July 1906.jpg
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Paddy Casey
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Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?

Post by Paddy Casey » Tue Mar 27, 2018 2:45 pm

Sduddy wrote:* all the quotes are from "Map of a Nation" by Rachel Hewitt (Granta 2010)
E-version of "Map of a Nation: A Biography Of The Ordnance Survey" can be bought (for around €8, I think) at https://play.google.com/store/books/det ... h_viewport

Paddy

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