Name Books and Letters


The Ordnance Survey Office was established in 1824 under the direction of Colonel Thomas Colby to undertake a townland survey of Ireland and to map the entire country at a scale of 6 inches to one mile.

The surveyors who undertook this task were also charged with the task of examining individual place-names details and variants to determine a suitable spelling for each name which did not already have a standardised English form and with recording this information in a series of volumes known as Name Books.

Other details were also recorded, such as local monuments, buildings of note, archaeological objects etc. making them a very interesting and useful addition to local information.

Volumes of Letters comprising the correspondence between the field researchers and the Ordnance Survey office were also published and provide further details of interest concerning the history of places countrywide.


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Please note this section is under construction.

On this form, you can search for entries in the Ordnance Survey Name Books and Letters, published between 1824 and 1842 as part of the first complete mapping survey of Ireland. The results will show you a list of places in our Name Books and Letters Collection that match your search and will give you the option to view the original Name Book or Letter page, a PDF version of the same document and a map showing the location of the place.
Find out more about the Name Books and Letters

You may narrow your search by searching only within a particular county.

If you do not enter a place-name, the search will return all the Name Book and Letter records in the county that you select from the pull-down menus. The search will take a few moments if you ask for all the place-names in a county.

The results will show you a list of places in our Name Books and Letters Collection that match your search, and will give you the option to view the original Name Book or Letter page, a PDF version of the same document, and a map showing our best approximation of where the place is.

Step 1 - Mandatory

  

Step 2 - Optional

    
Enter a place-name Within a particular region (optional)