Page 10 - COBH EDITION 17TH MAY DIGITAL VERSION

The Down Survey Map and the Great Island - Jim Shealy

Parish of Templerobin, Great Island, Down Survey map 1656 - 1658

Personally I have always had an interest in maps and mapping, pouring over old
maps preferably on a wet day is no burden to me, I just love it. Maps, be they old
historic maps or today’s computer generated Google Maps are full of information.
This information, can tell us a lot about where we came from, population trends,
infrastructure, how our towns and cities developed, traditional rights of way, (A
very contentious issue at the moment in Cobh) how the land was utilised, journey
planning and many other facts about our present world as well as the world of the
people who lived in Ireland and other countries before us.

In Ireland, we are fortunate and it is widely recognised that our country is one
of the most mapped countries in the world. Most of these historic maps were of
course produced for the benefit of gaining information on the inhabitants of the
island for the purpose of taxation and raising monies. One collection of maps which
I find most intriguing and which are full of incredible information for anyone inter-
ested in their history both National and local, are the Down Survey maps of the
17th. Century.

Following the victory of Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarian Army over the Royalist
Confederate Catholics, who had shown loyalty to the deposed and beheaded King
Charles 1, the lands of the defeated Catholic, through acts of parliament were to be
confiscated and granted to soldiers of Cromwell’s army, adventurers and mercenar-
ies who had bankrolled the invasion of Ireland.

Ireland in the years 1656 to 1658 was to be surveyed, as the song goes, ‘every
mountain, every valley, every tree and bird’s nest’. This survey was carried out
under the direction of William Petty Surgeon General of the English army and would
be the first ever detailed survey of this kind carried out anywhere in the world.