Taken in the years 1656-1658, the Down Survey of Ireland was a comprehensive survey of Ireland, carried out by English scientist, William Petty. It was the first ever detailed land survey on a national scale anywhere in the world. The survey sought to measure all the land to be forfeited by the Catholic Irish in order to facilitate its redistribution to Merchant Adventurers and English soldiers. Copies of these maps have survived in dozens of libraries and archives throughout Ireland and Britain, as well as in the National Library of France.[1]
Following the Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland at the beginning of the 1650s, the Commonwealth government was indebted to many private individuals, known as Adventurers, who had advanced sums of money to finance the war in Ireland. In addition to this, many soldiers who fought in the war were owed large arrears of pay. Both classes were to be repaid by the granting of confiscated lands in Ireland. To facilitate this extensive transfer of land, William Petty was appointed, in 1654, to measure and map, within 13 months, the forfeited lands, the crown lands, and the church lands in the 22 counties set apart for the soldiers. He was also to define the boundaries of the baronies within the counties. Petty’s survey became known as the Down Survey, because the measurements were ‘laid down’ as maps.[2]
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Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland
The Cromwellian war in Ireland (1649–53) was the conquest of Ireland by the forces of the English Parliament, led by Oliver Cromwell, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. With King Charles I beheaded, Westminster appointed Oliver Cromwell to lead an invasion of Ireland in March 1649, with instructions to crush all resistance to the new English Commonwealth and to avenge the alleged massacres of Protestant settlers in 1641-2.[3] Irish land was also a valuable commodity, almost 70% of which was still held by Catholic landowners. Cromwell arrived in August 1649, with 12,000 troops and a formidable train of siege artillery. Over the next four years his army defeated all military opposition in a series of bloody sieges and battles, which included the notorious massacres at Drogheda and Wexford in late 1649. Catholic Irish resistance proved very stubborn and the English army resorted to scorched earth tactics to deny the enemy any sustenance or shelter. Between 1650 and 1652 Ireland suffered a demographic disaster with up to 25% of the population dying as a result of deliberately induced famine, which also encouraged the spread of diseases such as dysentery and the plague.
By 1653, when the last formal surrenders of the war took place, the country had been devastated, the population decimated, the economic infrastructure destroyed. The English had effectively created a blank slate in Ireland onto which they now sought to project a new plantation society.[4] Meanwhile, Cromwell gave command of his army to his son-in-law, Henry Ireton, to complete the conquest. The name 'Cromwell' became synonymous with the actions of the New Model Army at Drogheda and Wexford and other policies imposed by the Cromwellian administration such as the transplantation of Irish Catholics to Connaught, the 1650s land settlement, and the transportation of Irish people to Barbados as indentured servants.[5]
After the completion of the Cromwellian conquest, Ireland was settled by adventurers and former soldiers loyal to Parliament. Surnames such as Ludlow, Tuckey, Haslam, Smithwick and Sadleir appear in Ireland at this time.[6] The descendants of many of these colonists would continue to hold land in Ireland up until the creation of the Irish Free State in the 1920s.
In the aftermath of the conquest, it was necessary to survey the lands in order to better aid confiscation and redistribution. The Civil Survey, so called because it was ordered by the Civil Authority, was taken from 1654-6 in order to value the lands in Leinster, Munster, Ulster and Connaught assigned to satisfy the claims of soldiers for their arrears of pay during the Civil War, and of those Adventurers who made cash available in the 1640’s to pay for the war and were promised land in Ireland in return. The Civil Survey, based as it was on the records of the original owners and not the result of an official or government survey, was considered by many of the new owners to be inaccurate and the Down Survey, so called because a chain was laid down and a scale made, was taken from 1656-8 under the direction of William Petty.
Teams of surveyors, mainly former soldiers, were sent out under Petty’s direction to measure every townland to be forfeited to soldiers and adventurers. The resulting maps, made at a scale of 40 perches to one inch (the modern equivalent of 1:50,000), were the first systematic mapping of a large area on such a scale attempted anywhere. The primary purpose of these maps was to record the boundaries of each townland and to calculate their areas with great precision. The maps are also rich in other detail showing churches, roads, rivers, castles, houses and fortifications. Most towns are represented pictorially and the cartouches, the decorative titles, of each map in many cases reflect a specific characteristic of each barony.[7] In return, he was to become an extensive landowner. As payment for the survey, he received 3500 acres of land in Kenmare, to which he added 2000 more from soldiers anxious to leave Ireland for home. In 1661, King Charles II knighted him and gave him the remainder of Kenmare and Tuoist parishes; he then owned 270,000 acres of land in County Kerry. In later years, Petty was to be one of the founders of demographic and economic statistics, a founding member of the Royal Society, and a Member of Parliament.[8]
Using the Down Survey
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Used in conjunction with the “books of survey and distribution”, Petty’s detailed maps showed every townland, parish and barony in Ireland, the acreage of each townland, the type of land, the owner in 1641 (when the devastating Irish war began) and the owner in 1670, when the transfer of land was complete.
A project undertaken by Trinity College Dublin, sought out surviving copies of the maps. More than 2,000 maps were then digitised and brought back together for the first time in 300 years as a remarkable atlas of 17th-century Ireland.
By laying all the surviving maps over Ordnance Survey maps, Google maps and satellite imagery, and by employing GIS technology, the atlas has become a remarkable tool for exploring land ownership, religion and topography during one of the most crucial periods of modern Irish history. The website links the maps and accompanying information to other databases – the books of “survey and distribution”, the census of 1659, the witness statements on the atrocities committed against Protestants in 1641 (previously digitised by TCD and also available free online), the first atlas of Ireland and the first Ordnance Survey.[9]
There are two main components to this website. The Down Survey Maps section comprises digital images of all the surviving Down Survey maps at parish, barony and county level. The written descriptions (terrier) of each barony and parish that accompanied the original maps have also been included. The second section, Historical GIS, brings together the maps and related contemporaneous sources – Books of Survey and Distribution, the 1641 Depositions, the 1659 Census – in a Geographical Information System (GIS). All these sources have been georeferenced with 19th-century Ordnance Survey maps, Google Maps and satellite imagery.[10]
The Historical GIS primarily maps out the Quit Rent Office version of the Books of Survey and Distribution, with all their imperfections. It is not a definitive source on 17th-century Irish townlands as their boundaries continued to change prior to the later Ordinance Survey mapping of Ireland in the 19th century.
The Historical GIS enables researchers to search for the following three types of information:
- Landowner by Name (1641 and 1670)
- Ownership by Religion (Maps for 1641 and 1670)
- Murders in the 1641 rebellion (Distribution)
Explore more about the Down Survey of Ireland
- Ireland - Directories record collection at MyHeritage
- Ireland - Land & Property record collection at MyHeritage
- The Down Survey of Ireland. Trinity College Dublin
References
- ↑ http://downsurvey.tchpc.tcd.ie/
- ↑ https://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/maps/petty_intro.htm
- ↑ http://www.lurganancestry.com/cromwellsconquest.htm
- ↑ https://downsurvey.tchpc.tcd.ie/history.html
- ↑ https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/research/spotlight-research/why-did-oliver-cromwell-end-ireland-first-place
- ↑ https://www.aletterfromireland.com/the-evolution-of-irish-surnames-where-your-irish-surname-fits/
- ↑ https://downsurvey.tchpc.tcd.ie/history.html
- ↑ https://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/digital-book-collection/digital-books-by-subject/history-of-ireland/petty-down-survey/
- ↑ https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/trinity-s-online-down-survey-gives-new-life-to-a-long-gone-ireland-1.1388744
- ↑ https://downsurvey.tchpc.tcd.ie/index.html