QUB uploads digitised late-medieval maps of Ulster

Inishowen: a section of cartographer Richard Bartlett's
1602 A Generalle Description of Vlster

The Special Collection's team at Queen's University Belfast (QUB) has shared its newest digital addition: Maps of the Escheated Counties of Ireland, 1609.

Researchers can now freely view this atlas online (it was first published in 1861) of 31 facsimiles of maps of Ireland dating from 1594 to 1609. It contains maps of Ulster by Richard Bartlett (the royal cartographer beheaded by the people of Donegal who did not want their lands 'discovered'), the Bodley maps, and John Thomas's map of the 1594 siege of Enniskillen Castle, famous for its grisly images of the severed heads of Gaelic defenders stuck on stakes.

A post has been published today, along with a selection of the maps, on the Special Collections blog (read it here), while the full atlas can be viewed in the QUB's Digital Library.