Dr Ivar McGrath, senior lecturer in the UCD School of History and Archives, recently recorded an interview for History Hub on Mapping State and Society in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, a project on which he and Dr Patrick Walsh are Principal Investigators. The interview focused on a pilot website for the project: Army Barracks of Eighteenth-Century Ireland which recently went live.
Mapping State and Society in Eighteenth-Century Ireland
The project, led by Dr Ivar McGrath and Dr Patrick Walsh, is developing a free electronic platform for research outputs that are using spatial and other data in order to create online maps and further data relating to state and society in eighteenth-century Ireland. Three current projects at UCD – mapping barracks, boroughs, and revenue collection ports and districts – will form the initial basis for the electronic platform. A further component on Law and Order is also in gestation at QUB. The platform will facilitate the integration in coming years of future projects on other aspects of state and society in the period, thereby creating a unique and essential electronic research tool for understanding eighteenth-century Ireland.
The project has been in gestation since November 2010, and is currently being funded by seed funding from UCD Research, a research award from UCD College of Arts and Celtic Studies and an IRC Government of Ireland ‘New Foundations’ award. The first phase of the project involves mapping all of the army barracks built between 1690 and 1815, and preparing supporting webpages that will contain further information, data, images and resources for each barracks. A pilot map of 142 barracks built throughout Ireland and webpages with detailed information for barracks in County Armagh is now available here. As part of this undertaking, the project team is keen to develop contacts with local communities and stakeholders around the country and to build connections with similar projects and websites. They therefore welcome all comments and other feedback.
To access the website go to http://barracks18c.ucd.ie/
Upcoming Events
3 February 2015, 4 p.m. Location: UCD School of History and Archives Research Forum, Room K114, UCD. Speaker: Ivar McGrath Lecture Title: ‘The Digital Mapping of Ireland’s Eighteenth-Century Built Military Heritage: Or, Rambles in Rural Armagh’. Free admission. All welcome.
4 February 2015, 8 p.m. Location: Seanchas Ard Mhacha, Cardinal O Fiaich Memorial Library and Archive, Armagh. Speaker: Ivar McGrath Lecture Title: ‘The Digital Mapping of Ireland’s Eighteenth-Century Barracks: The Armagh Story’. Free admission. All welcome.
Image: still from interactive map of Ireland showing locations of barracks courtesy of barracks18c.ucd.ie
