A free online interactive map of Cork City was launched today. The Digital Atlas of Cork/Corcaigh invites visitors to discover the city of Cork in a new way by exploring early maps of different dates and detailed historical information for 6,245 sites dating from AD623 to 1900. It includes descriptions of more than 800 streets, including their names in Irish and English, as well as historical varients.
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| Screengrab from the Digital Atlas of Cork/Corcaigh. Click image to learn more. |
Additional map layers will be released over the coming months, providing access for the first time to digitised town plans by the Ordnance Survey (1842) and Valuation Office (1852–64).
The digital atlas is based on research carried out for Irish Historic Towns Atlas, no. 31, Cork/Corcaigh by H.B. Clarke and Máire Ní Laoi, which will be published in print by the Royal Irish Academy in May 2024.
The Irish Historic Towns Atlas (IHTA) was established in 1981. The aim of the programme is to record the topographical development of a selection of Irish towns both large and small.
Each town is published separately as a fascicle or folder and includes a series of maps complemented by a detailed text section. The IHTA is part of a wider European scheme, with towns atlases containing broadly similar information available for a number of countries, allowing Irish towns to be studied in their European context.
See the Lord Mayor of Cork's brief video introduction to the publication below.