CONTENTS
This project is published in sections, each comprising a group of chapters. Chapters are posted as blogs and will appear here underlined as they are completed and published.
Section I: An Imperial Legacy (1824–1914)
The monumental 19th-century Ordnance Survey of Ireland, its methods, achievements, and its lasting surveying and cartographic legacy.
Chapter 1: Ghosts of Mountjoy
Chapter 2. A Complete Map
5. Navigation, Napoleon, and “Normalisation”
11. Accuracy Once Lost Cannot Be Recovered
Chapter 3. The Lough Foyle Baseline
Chapter 4. Upon Exalted Hills
19. Inveterate Haze and Fogginess
21. “Property has its duties as well as its rights”
22. The Surveyors on the Summits
Chapter 5. Draggers of the Chain
23. Chapter 5: Introduction. The Rod of Kha
26. Memory and the Map: Mac Sweeney of Doe
Coming soon…
27. Names on the Map: Authority, Language and the Ordnance Survey
27A. Thomas Aiskew Larcom
27B. John O’Donovan
Chapter 6. Crow’s Feet and Devil’s Marks
Section II: Transformed Utterly (1914-1950)
How war, revolution, and partition shattered the existing surveying institutions and reshaped mapping on the island. To be published in due course.
7. Indian Summers, Imperial Autumns
8. Rebellion
9. As the Deluge Subsides
10. Ubique
Section III:Stagnation (1922-1950)
The long post-independence decline in mapping capacity caused by economic hardship, political priorities, and institutional neglect. To be published in due course.
Section IV: Renewal (1950-1990)
The uneven attempts at modernisation through retriangulation, new technologies, and intermittent political and cross-border cooperation. To be published in due course
Section V: Transformation (1990-)
The decisive shift from traditional surveying to fully digital, satellite-based mapping and the end of the Survey’s military heritage. To be published in due course
Section VI: For Profit or Public Purpose?
Analyses the turn towards commercialisation and the redefinition of the Ordnance Survey as a revenue-generating information business. To be published in due course
Postscript
Reflects on the retreat from commercialisation, the absorption of the Ordnance Surveys into broader land and property agencies, and reflections on change. To be published in due course.
