Last September, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) held an online workshop about using ordnance survey maps, and now the 56-minute video recording is available on YouTube.
In the early nineteenth century, the Ordnance Survey of Ireland (OS) completed the first ever large-scale survey of an entire country. PRONI holds the original OS archive for the six counties of present day Northern Ireland, including manuscript maps, field sketches and name books. PRONI has worked with Land and Property Services to digitise and make available a range of OS maps held within the PRONI archive, which can be accessed using the PRONI Historical Maps Viewer.
This online workshop introduces basic map reading skills and demonstrate how the Maps Viewer can be used to browse historical OS maps and modern basemaps (including aerial imagery) for counties Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone. The viewer displays county, parish and townland boundaries and includes information on sites, buildings and landmarks of historical interest. A variety of tools and ‘widgets’ are demonstrated so you can search and browse the maps, compare one map with another, and find various points of historical interest in your area.
Visit PRONI’s YouTube channel to see more videos, including one recently posted, called The American Revolutionary War – An Archival Journey, during which the war is explored through the lens of archives held in PRONI.
