I think that the Blue Book was a list of specifications, or precise requirements. I remember reading somewhere – probably in ‘A Paper Landscape’ - that Thomas Colby’s Blue Book was so packed with requirements it made work in the field very exacting and slow.
My letter to Richard Kirwan, which I had sent to the address on the publisher’s website, was returned unopened – maybe Londubh Books is over.
Never mind. I was glad to get ‘Mapping the Past’ by Charles Drazin (Penguin Random House, 2016) and enjoyed it very much. It's very clear and easy to read.
Drazin is trying to find what he can of the lives of five Lynch brothers from Doora, who joined the Royal Engineers at the end of the 19th and beginning of 20th centuries. The Ennis office of the Ordnance Survey was one of just four in Ireland. The Lynches seem to have been working as casual labour at first and it was only on being recommended by a higher-up that they got to join the Royal Engineers. Then they were allowed to choose which section of that vast body they wanted to work in. Four of them chose surveying (one failed the maths test, but he scored well in the dication test and was made a Clerk - he died in the Great War) and one chose to be a miner and worked mostly in harbours. Then they had to undergo training in Chatham.
Drazin finds very little on the Lynches apart from lists of their postings to various parts of the Empire, but he weaves in descriptions of those far-flung places as they were in those times, and, altogether, manages to give as good an idea as he possibly can of the world they lived in. The motto of the Royal Engineers was ‘Ubique Quo Fas et Gloria Ducunt’ (Everywhere, whither right and glory lead), and the reports from the officers show a very imperious mindset. Those officers did not eat or mix with the men – maybe the men were happy enough with that.
Drazin gleans what he can from a magazine called ‘The Sapper’ and quotes from an issue from 1895, which addresses the question, what is a sapper? (p.103):
‘”He is the man-of-all-work of the Army and the public; and the authorities, by a wave of the official wand, may transform him into any of the various characters of – astronomer, geologist, surveyor, engineer, draughtsman, artist, architect, traveller, explorer, commissioner, inspector, artificer, mechanic, diver, soldier, or sailor – in short, he is a Sapper.’”
And the following (p.232) is gleaned from Drazin’s reading of a Royal Engineer’s surveyor’s manual: “The practice was for the officer to undertake the triangulation and supervise the fieldwork, while the NCO, with the help of a sapper, recorded the topography, using a plane table. A board fixed horizontally to a tripod, the plane table was equipped with a special telescopic sight – an alidade – that measured the angle of distant points. Once the NCO had plotted the position of the triangulation points on a sheet attached to the board, he would sketch in the details of the land by eye. When he left one position for a new one, he built a cairn so that he would be able to sight the old position. Within the framework of the measured distances, he would then add the contours of the hills, calculating the gradient with a clinometer”. Drazin goes on to explain that the above was only part of the task. At the end of the day the work was completed in ink, with as many details as possible recorded – even the most distant detail was recorded. He comes to the conclusion that the non-commissioned soldier was far more accomplished in the skill of surveying than the officer, but it was the officer who got all the credit.
There the sapper is described as assisting the NCO - which makes me think that in theory a sapper was all sorts of wonderful things, but in reality the word “Sapper” was used for the lowest grade.
So what can I extrapolate from that for our 25 inch map? I’m fairly sure that the 25-inch started from an enlargement of the 6-inch, so there was no need for all the work of triangulation. Also there is no contouring in our 25-inch - making the land look flat (the satellite images produce the same effect – no valleys, no hills). But heights were measured and corresponding benchmarks carved into stone. New houses were marked in and the outlines of old houses changed and a wealth of other detail marked in. Whether this was done by surveyors, or sappers, or surveyor-sappers doesn't really matter.
Yes, I would like to get a look at the Blue Book for the 25-inch (1:2500).
Sheila
Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?
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Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?
I went back to school and read J. H. Andrews again (‘A Paper Landscape – The Ordnance Survey in Nineteenth-Century Ireland’ Four Courts Press, 2002), skipping over all the difficult technical bits – just like I did when I read it in 2010. This book deals with all the Ordnance Survey maps made in the 19th c., especially the 6 inch map made in 1842 (familiar to us because it was used for Griffith’s Valuation), but it deals only very fleetingly in the last couple of chapters with the making of the end-of-century 25 inch map. So this time I read through the whole book, keeping an eye out for anything that might throw some light on the making of the 25 inch, and I did find a couple of helpful bits.
I found that civilian assistants, both draftsmen and surveyors, were advertised for in the Dublin Evening Post, 26 Nov. – 30 Dec. 1826, and Irish labour was employed, which was a big change from the original policy of employing non-Irish only. Andrews says ‘[this] established a pattern of mixed civil and military organization that remained unbroken for nearly a hundred years. By the late 1830s the ‘C.A.s’ in Ireland outnumbered the sappers by four to one’ (p 65).
This following (pp 90 - 91) regarding the late 1830s is also interesting: ‘As for the sappers-versus civilians controversy, both sides [a reference to a dispute] turned out to be right. Civil assistants had increased tenfold since Smyth’s time [late 1820s] and although there were some complaints of falling quality during the expansion of the later thirties, Colby [Superintendent - O.S] was quoted by the Dublin Evening Post as saying that he had never found people more easily trained, more steady, or more industrious that the Irishmen employed by his department….Meanwhile the military sector retained an importance out of proportion to its slightly diminished numerical strength, and it is not inappropriate that (perhaps because of the conspicuousness of the soldiers’ uniforms) the Survey as a whole should have passed into Irish folklore as ‘the sappers’. Here too Ireland had cause for pride, for Dubliners, along with Scotsmen, were said to provide the corps with the most intelligent of its recruits’.
Many of the surveyors seem to have been recruited in the north of Ireland where the survey began c.1826. Speaking of the attempt to gather material such as folklore (ie. the Memoir), while also doing normal duties, Andrews quotes one officer as saying, ‘I am constantly at my men about these matters, but many of them are Presbyterians from the north who care not for “eremites and friars, white, black and grey, with all their trumpery”’ (p 127).
I am wondering if the Royal Engineers and Sappers, that I found in Co. Clare the 1901 and 1911 censuses, are just what little remained of a larger workforce – most of which was now disbanded, and if so, is there anything anywhere about those men. I'm dreaming of a book like Charles Drazin’s – only set in Ireland.
Sheila
I found that civilian assistants, both draftsmen and surveyors, were advertised for in the Dublin Evening Post, 26 Nov. – 30 Dec. 1826, and Irish labour was employed, which was a big change from the original policy of employing non-Irish only. Andrews says ‘[this] established a pattern of mixed civil and military organization that remained unbroken for nearly a hundred years. By the late 1830s the ‘C.A.s’ in Ireland outnumbered the sappers by four to one’ (p 65).
This following (pp 90 - 91) regarding the late 1830s is also interesting: ‘As for the sappers-versus civilians controversy, both sides [a reference to a dispute] turned out to be right. Civil assistants had increased tenfold since Smyth’s time [late 1820s] and although there were some complaints of falling quality during the expansion of the later thirties, Colby [Superintendent - O.S] was quoted by the Dublin Evening Post as saying that he had never found people more easily trained, more steady, or more industrious that the Irishmen employed by his department….Meanwhile the military sector retained an importance out of proportion to its slightly diminished numerical strength, and it is not inappropriate that (perhaps because of the conspicuousness of the soldiers’ uniforms) the Survey as a whole should have passed into Irish folklore as ‘the sappers’. Here too Ireland had cause for pride, for Dubliners, along with Scotsmen, were said to provide the corps with the most intelligent of its recruits’.
Many of the surveyors seem to have been recruited in the north of Ireland where the survey began c.1826. Speaking of the attempt to gather material such as folklore (ie. the Memoir), while also doing normal duties, Andrews quotes one officer as saying, ‘I am constantly at my men about these matters, but many of them are Presbyterians from the north who care not for “eremites and friars, white, black and grey, with all their trumpery”’ (p 127).
I am wondering if the Royal Engineers and Sappers, that I found in Co. Clare the 1901 and 1911 censuses, are just what little remained of a larger workforce – most of which was now disbanded, and if so, is there anything anywhere about those men. I'm dreaming of a book like Charles Drazin’s – only set in Ireland.
Sheila
Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?
Sheila, some of my ancestors were from County Antrim and I purchased several of the Ordnance Survey Memoirs on a trip to Ireland back in the 1990's. Within the past year I decided to have a look for the County Clare & Limerick equivalent. Of course, unsuccessfully. It was only in reading your above post that I realize that no memoirs were written for counties outside of Ulster due to lack of funds.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.
The Ulster Historical Foundation has all 40 volumes of the OS Memoirs (each about 130 to 160 pages) available for purchase on-line. Perhaps also available in Ireland via inter-library loan?
https://www.ancestryireland.com/latest- ... available/
The above link mentions that Volume 21 South Antrim is one of the most memorable in the series. I purchased this one as it includes the parish of Aghagallon where my great great grandfather is from. When I visited the Catholic Church at Aghagallon about 1995 or so, the parish priest was helpful in identifying where the local Catholic cemeteries were located. When I asked him if he got many Americans asking for baptism records etc, he said it was torture, absolute torture (he managed to use "torture" three times in one sentence). So it is a very good thing that the original baptism records are now on-line at the NLI website and have been transcribed by you and others. The local parish priests in Clare have hopefully noted a decline in requests and are now less tortured.
Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?
Yes I’m sure that the priests are less tortured now. I remember that John Grenham – a professional genealogist who used to write a column for the Irish Times – was delighted to announce the digitalizing of the parish records and promised he would dance a jig on that day.
As for the memoirs – I need to make a correction. I said that the cost had been estimated at £500 per parish – I should have said per county. It was a shame that Templemore (which cost £1,700) left itself open to so many criticisms. It was very badly edited and very bulky and one critic said it was just a parade of erudition.
But the Ordnance Survey Letters of John O’Donovan and Eugene Curry are a wonderful Memoir substitute that we in the other counties can dip into by going to the Griffith’s map on askaboutireland.ie and cliking on Name Books on the top right-hand corner (it doesn’t open at the right page for me and I have to go looking for the bit I want – am I doing something wrong?), and anyone looking for the letters for Co. Clare is doubly lucky – just go to http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclar ... /index.htm. Once again, somebody behind the scenes at Clare Library has done a lot of work to make life easy for us!
These letters were published in 1997 by Clasp Press as ‘The Antiquities of County Clare – Ordnance Survey Letters 1839'. I’m very pleased to have a copy and delighted that O’Donovan and Curry “paraded their erudition”. The amazing thing is that they wrote this stuff in the evenings after a long day out in the wet and the wind.
By the way, I was dipping into ‘The Strangers Gaze – travels in County Clare 1534-1950’ edited by Brian O Daiaigh (Clasp Press 1998) and saw that William Roy came to Ireland and to Co. Clare in 1776. O Dalaigh gives a very helpful background to each piece in the book and he explains that Roy came to Ireland to report on the state of the country’s defences. Roy’s report on Clare (p. 115) is a bit dry - he wasn't writing for my amusement.
Sheila
As for the memoirs – I need to make a correction. I said that the cost had been estimated at £500 per parish – I should have said per county. It was a shame that Templemore (which cost £1,700) left itself open to so many criticisms. It was very badly edited and very bulky and one critic said it was just a parade of erudition.
But the Ordnance Survey Letters of John O’Donovan and Eugene Curry are a wonderful Memoir substitute that we in the other counties can dip into by going to the Griffith’s map on askaboutireland.ie and cliking on Name Books on the top right-hand corner (it doesn’t open at the right page for me and I have to go looking for the bit I want – am I doing something wrong?), and anyone looking for the letters for Co. Clare is doubly lucky – just go to http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclar ... /index.htm. Once again, somebody behind the scenes at Clare Library has done a lot of work to make life easy for us!
These letters were published in 1997 by Clasp Press as ‘The Antiquities of County Clare – Ordnance Survey Letters 1839'. I’m very pleased to have a copy and delighted that O’Donovan and Curry “paraded their erudition”. The amazing thing is that they wrote this stuff in the evenings after a long day out in the wet and the wind.
By the way, I was dipping into ‘The Strangers Gaze – travels in County Clare 1534-1950’ edited by Brian O Daiaigh (Clasp Press 1998) and saw that William Roy came to Ireland and to Co. Clare in 1776. O Dalaigh gives a very helpful background to each piece in the book and he explains that Roy came to Ireland to report on the state of the country’s defences. Roy’s report on Clare (p. 115) is a bit dry - he wasn't writing for my amusement.
Sheila
Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?
I’ve come upon an article entitled ‘The Ordnance Survey Sappers Marks’ by Mary Kearns in The Other Clare, Vol. 35 (2011). She explains that the sappers mark is also called a benchmark, a horizontal cut with an arrow underneath pointing to that cut. I remember we used to call them ‘crows feet’ when I was young. The older ones were chiseled into stone by making a ‘V’ cut. They denoted height above sealevel (at Poolbeg lighthouse in Dublin). But I have a feeling that the later ones for the 25 inch map were made using a template and sandblaster – at least I have a vision of some that were quite uniform, smoother and shallower - I hope they are not a figment of my imagination. As with the inscriptions on headstones, the older ones often remain clearest. Most of these marks have disappeared because buildings have been demolished and roads widened. But there are some left and Mary Kearns mentions a few that are still to be seen in the town of Ennis.
In her article, Kearns writes mainly on the making of the 6-inch map, but mentions a couple of things that have a bearing on the 25-inch. She mentions that, for the purposes of writing the article, she looked at 'Ordnance Survey Papers 1: progress reports and returns', held in the National Archives of Ireland (NAI, O.S. 1/1 page 1-24). ‘These records’, she says, ‘accounted for all aspects of the work and for activities of all staff of the Ordnance Survey between 1826 and 1943’. And she mentions that the work for the 25-inch, which began in 1887, was completed in 1913.
I doubt that I will get to look at those papers in N.A.I., but if someone else does, I will be interested in hearing (or reading about) what they contain. If an article is in the pipeline, I will happily await that.
Sheila
In her article, Kearns writes mainly on the making of the 6-inch map, but mentions a couple of things that have a bearing on the 25-inch. She mentions that, for the purposes of writing the article, she looked at 'Ordnance Survey Papers 1: progress reports and returns', held in the National Archives of Ireland (NAI, O.S. 1/1 page 1-24). ‘These records’, she says, ‘accounted for all aspects of the work and for activities of all staff of the Ordnance Survey between 1826 and 1943’. And she mentions that the work for the 25-inch, which began in 1887, was completed in 1913.
I doubt that I will get to look at those papers in N.A.I., but if someone else does, I will be interested in hearing (or reading about) what they contain. If an article is in the pipeline, I will happily await that.
Sheila
Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?
Hi Shiela, regarding the six Scottish born surveyors on your Ordnance Surveyor listing, two of the men (Joseph Grehan and Stephen Sullivan) are Catholics in the 1901 Irish Census. While born in Scotland, they are of Irish stock - the sons of Irish born Ordnance Surveyors who lived in Scotland:
Scotland and England have excellent census records compared to Ireland.
In the 1861 Census for Stirling, Scotland is Daniel Grehan (age 27, born Ireland) and his wife Helen (age 25, born Scotland); occupation: Corporal Royal Engineers Employed on the Ordnance Quarry. Their 3 children include Joseph Grehan (age 3, born in Stirling) - one of your surveyors living in County Clare in 1901.
In the 1861 Census for Kent, England is Stephen Sullivan (age 50, born Ireland) and his wife Mary (age 41, born Ireland); occupation: Civil Assistant Ordnance Surveyor. Their eldest son John (age 16, born Scotland) is a Laborer, Ordnance Survey; and middle son Stephen (age 6, born Scotland) is your Surveyor living in County Clare in 1901.
This is further evidence that the Surveyor occupation was passed down from father to son. The 1901 Irish Census has 3 generations of Grehan Surveyors living in County Clare: the grandfather Daniel Grehan born in Ireland; his son Joseph Grehan born in Scotland; and grandson Daniel Grehan born in England. Here is the grandfather Daniel Grehan living in Ennis, occupation: Army Pensioner Royal Engineers.
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/r ... 000463993/
Scotland and England have excellent census records compared to Ireland.
In the 1861 Census for Stirling, Scotland is Daniel Grehan (age 27, born Ireland) and his wife Helen (age 25, born Scotland); occupation: Corporal Royal Engineers Employed on the Ordnance Quarry. Their 3 children include Joseph Grehan (age 3, born in Stirling) - one of your surveyors living in County Clare in 1901.
In the 1861 Census for Kent, England is Stephen Sullivan (age 50, born Ireland) and his wife Mary (age 41, born Ireland); occupation: Civil Assistant Ordnance Surveyor. Their eldest son John (age 16, born Scotland) is a Laborer, Ordnance Survey; and middle son Stephen (age 6, born Scotland) is your Surveyor living in County Clare in 1901.
This is further evidence that the Surveyor occupation was passed down from father to son. The 1901 Irish Census has 3 generations of Grehan Surveyors living in County Clare: the grandfather Daniel Grehan born in Ireland; his son Joseph Grehan born in Scotland; and grandson Daniel Grehan born in England. Here is the grandfather Daniel Grehan living in Ennis, occupation: Army Pensioner Royal Engineers.
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/r ... 000463993/
Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?
Lucille Ellis, who contributed above, has followed through on her interest in the Ordnance Survey. Her latest her book, Erasmus Smith House Ennis, incorporating Harmony Row, Springfield and St Anthony’s Terrace, includes a section devoted to the Ordnance Survey 1888-1913 - Erasmus Smith House in Ennis was the Limerick Office for the Ordnance Survey 1888-1913, as suitable accommodation could not be found in Limerick (Headquarters was in Southampton in England and the base in Ireland was in the Mountjoy Barracks in the Phoenix Park in Dublin).
So Congratulations to Lucille Ellis and to Clare Roots Society on the publication of the book. I would not have known of it, but was visiting Ennis yesterday and found it in a bookshop (Ennis is rich in bookshops*: The Ennis Bookshop, O’Mahonys, Easons, Scéal Eile and probably one I’m forgetting).
Well, I went straight to the section on the Ordance Survey (p 29) and read it on the train going home. There are short biographical pieces on several of the more senior members of staff. Some were quatered in Ordnance House, as Erasmus Smith House was now called. Others were in lodgings in the town, and there were groups of assistants in Tipperary, Kerry and Mayo, plus a group of eleven in Killaloe, all under supervision from Ennis. Ellis uses the records of the Church of Ireland school in Harmony Row to show the numbers of the children of Ordnance Survey staff, who were registered at that school between 1891 and 1914. She gives some examples of Ordnance Survey staff who remained in Co. Clare after 1913, writing biographical pieces on three: Patrick Richard Gordon, William Boam and Connor O’Neill.
Delighted with all that, I can now go on to read the rest of the book. The cover has a wonderful portrait of Mr Erasmus Smith painted in deep rich colours (courtesy Wikimedia Commons): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... Wright.jpg. Erasmus Smith lived 1611-1691. He is described as an English merchant, landowner and philanthropist, and, sure enough, he is putting what looks like a money note on the table.
Sheila
* Bookshops in Ennis: When William Thackeray visited Ennis in 1842, he wrote,
So Congratulations to Lucille Ellis and to Clare Roots Society on the publication of the book. I would not have known of it, but was visiting Ennis yesterday and found it in a bookshop (Ennis is rich in bookshops*: The Ennis Bookshop, O’Mahonys, Easons, Scéal Eile and probably one I’m forgetting).
Well, I went straight to the section on the Ordance Survey (p 29) and read it on the train going home. There are short biographical pieces on several of the more senior members of staff. Some were quatered in Ordnance House, as Erasmus Smith House was now called. Others were in lodgings in the town, and there were groups of assistants in Tipperary, Kerry and Mayo, plus a group of eleven in Killaloe, all under supervision from Ennis. Ellis uses the records of the Church of Ireland school in Harmony Row to show the numbers of the children of Ordnance Survey staff, who were registered at that school between 1891 and 1914. She gives some examples of Ordnance Survey staff who remained in Co. Clare after 1913, writing biographical pieces on three: Patrick Richard Gordon, William Boam and Connor O’Neill.
Delighted with all that, I can now go on to read the rest of the book. The cover has a wonderful portrait of Mr Erasmus Smith painted in deep rich colours (courtesy Wikimedia Commons): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... Wright.jpg. Erasmus Smith lived 1611-1691. He is described as an English merchant, landowner and philanthropist, and, sure enough, he is putting what looks like a money note on the table.
Sheila
* Bookshops in Ennis: When William Thackeray visited Ennis in 1842, he wrote,
There seems to be some good shops in those narrow streets; among others, a decent little library, where I bought, for eighteen pence, six volumes of works strictly Irish, that will serve for a half-hour's gossip on the next rainy day. (page 200 of The Stranger's Gaze: Travels in County Clare 1534 - 1950, edited by Brian Ó Dálaigh).
Re: Anything to read on the making of the 25 inch map?
Jimbo posted about John Robin Roy (employee of the Ordnance Survey) on 24 Mar 2018, page 1 of this thread, including a record of his death by drowning in Ballybeg Lake in 1896. I see that John is mentioned in Erasmus Smith House Ennis, incorporating Harmony Row, Springfield and St Anthony’s Terrace, by Lucille Ellis. The mention is not in the section on the Ordnance Survey, but in a later section entitled “Masonic Hall” (page 73). Ellis says that by 1911 the new caretaker of the Masonic Hall was Benjamin Dean. A retired Colour Sergeant, he had been widowed in 1901 and had remarried Mary B Roy: “She was the widow of John Robin Roy of the Ordnance Survey Office in Ennis who had accidentally drowned while fishing in Ballybeg Lake in 1896. Her younger son, also John Robin Roy, died of his wounds in Flanders in 1918 while several of Benjamin Dean’s sons also fought in the war”.
Sheila
Sheila