Griffiths Valuation maps viewable free at AAI

[Paddy Casey]

Those looking for the ca. 1855 homesteads of their Griffith-listed families may be interested to know that the Griffith's Valuation maps can be viewed at no charge on the Ask About Ireland website at http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith- ... nameSearch

Once you get to the maps the procedure for drilling down to a given townland is a little clunky and needs persistence but it's worth the effort (see "gift horses, inspection of mouths thereof", etc.).

Paddy

[murf]

Thanks for signposting that site Paddy. It has helped me to locate a couple of properties. However I struck a snag in trying to pinpoint two of my Murphy forebears in the townland of Inishdea. The map references do not appear to relate to the map provided.
Michael Murphy is said to occupy Allotment 3, subdivided into five parts, A, B, C, D & E. On the map there is a Lot 3, but has no house and is not subdivided.
Jane Murphy is said to occupy Allotments 4a and 5, yet the map has no allotments past 3.
Incidentally, I already have a hard copy of this same map which I got at the Valuation Office. I also have a later map showing a mess of subdivisions in Inishdea which occurred in the 1920's. These appear to have been plotted straight over the top of the 1850's map, suggesting that there wasn't another map in between these two.
This leaves me at a bit of a loss. Any suggestions?
Murf

[Paddy Casey]

This may have something to do with the Cancellation process at the Valuation Office, Murf. As you probably know, during the decades following the original Griffith valuation, families married and traded land as part of the marriage agreements, occupiers of land died, and plots were divided up or merged or changed hands. From time to time a Valuation officer would update the Valuation books (which thus became Cancellation books) accordingly by noting the changes in inks of difference colours, each colour corresponding to a year, and he would also update the corresponding map. As time went on the Cancellation book and the corresponding map would begin to look a little scruffy because of all the handwritten changes so the accumulated changes would be transferred to a new book (and a new map) and the Cancellations would start anew with the new book. The problem is that the dates of the Cancellation books and those of the maps sometimes do not coincide so I have occasionally found myself trying to correlate information in a cancellation book with a "corresponding" valuation map, only to find that they didn't match up exactly.

That all relates to the hardcopy materials at the Valuation Office. In the case of the maps viewable at the AAI site the challenge is compounded by the fact that they are not dated (as far as I can see) so it is not clear (to me) which Cancellation books they should be correlated with for a given townland.

Sorry not to be able to help more. Maybe a more knowledgeable person can step up here and enlighten us.

Paddy

[pwaldron]

I have been informed by people who should know about these things that the AAI maps are not contemporaneous with the printed Griffith's Valuation. The maps may be several decades more recent. Thus it is not at all surprising that people are having problems reconciling the printed listings with the online maps. Furthermore, there is no guarantee even where the two appear consistent that there has not been a renumbering of tenements in between times. It is often hard enough to reconcile a full set of cancelled books and a full set of cancelled maps in hard copy in the Irish Life Centre office, but that is still the only foolproof way to trace the history of a holding!

In the case of one of my own ancestors, not only do the boundaries and numbers change from map to map and book to book, but the course of the River Feale around Listowel also changes over the decades due to drainage works, etc!

[Paddy Casey]

When at the Valuation Office in Dublin I noticed that the old Cancellation books and maps are still in frequent use by solicitors and their clerks checking on land titles.
Last time I was at the Office there was a suit poring over some maps and lots of worried-looking suits kept coming into the map room and consulting with him and going out looking even more worried. I eventually overheard from two very-expensive-looking suits what it was all about. Some company in a large Irish city had spent € 6,000,000 on a property site in the city with the intention of making a big killing and it had turned out that in 1860-something the land had been carved up and some of the owners had emigrated and the guy that had sold the land to the company probably didn't have title. The fate of the €6,000,000 and a monster shopping centre was, it seemed, hanging on the barely legible scratchings of an 1870s clerk and his successors.

Paddy

[murf]

Another example of the difficulties faced here is my search for Connor Philips in the townland of Caherea in Clondagad Parish. The original page of Griffiths Valuation shows Caherea divided into 51 allotments, with Connor coming in at No 18. The first problem comes when you call up the map, you are directed to the wrong Caherea (in Kilmaley Parish). Fortunately I knew my way from Caherea Kilmaley to Caherea Clondagad, and after some furious panning to the southeast I arrived at the correct Caherea, to find it divided into only 27 allotments. A further clue to this anomaly is shown in the attached map segment, where OS map 41 adjoins OS map 50. Here you will observe that the southernmost tip of Lot 23 is shown on the adjoining sheet (OS50) as Lot 47.
This suggests that there was an earlier version of OS 41 showing the 51 allotments in Caherea. Note that the cancelled land books and corresponding map from the Valuation Office showed Connor Philips at Lot 6, and this location was confirmed by present-day locals.
In spite of all the difficulties and the hours of head scratching over colour-coded inks etc, the Griffiths Valuation and Cancelled Land Books have provided a wealth of information, and I must say well worth the effort.
Murf

Lot23_47.jpg (68.86 KiB) Viewed 14198 times