Nicholas Wolf

In 2008, I began looking for GIS shp files suitable to use for managing Irish historical data from the nineteenth century. One of the stellar models for this type of work is the University of Portsmouth's Great Britain Historical Geographical Information System and its user-friendly companion site A Vision of Britain Through Time . . . 

Such projects are immensely helpful to researchers not only because they enable data to be presented in geographic form, but also because they solve many of the problems associated with geographic information over time -- shifting administrative boundaries being the most obvious. The British data is available here.

However, when I turned to Ireland, no such data appears to be available at present -- at least not on such a researcher-friendly basis. The natural place to look for such data would be the Ordnance Survey Ireland, an old and venerable institution with a long (and much-discussed) history of mapping in Ireland. However, while the OS does produce historic maps, its shp files seem to be confined to modern data (queries made to OS have yet to be returned). Worse, I fear that OS charges for all of its data. This is a reasonable practice and one that provides access for some researchers, but not one that is practical for me at this time.

As it turns out, the researcher is not without recourse for Ireland when it comes to modern boundaries: the Central Statistics Office currently provides shp files for the 2006 census boundaries. Although not the historical information I am after, this is a great find.

Undaunted, my next direction has been to create the shp files myself using public domain maps and my trusty ArcMap program which I am slowly learning how to use. This summer has therefore been a crash course in rubber sheeting and boundary tracing to create my own files for the nineteenth century. As it turns out, ArcMap is indeed a great desktop tool. I was surprised to find that I could, with considerable time and patience, create my own map file consisting of Ireland's baronies, one of the major administrative units used up until mid-century (and in some cases, beyond) to organize population data. Here are the lovely results:

Admittedly, it doesn't look like much, but it represents about three weeks of patiently tracing boundaries and the rocky coastlines of the west (I can't decide if southwest Cork or western Galway has the more intricate coastline, but either way I'm glad to be done with it!). Best of all, it provides a great basis for presenting my findings on the census project as well as future data based on baronial units.

Next post I'll take a closer look at the actual territorial units at play in nineteenth century Ireland and the potential needs for further shp production!