Irish Towns: A Guide to Sources edited by William Nolan and Anngret Simms Geography Publications 249pp, £10
In 1986 the Royal Irish Academy published a study of Kildare, the first in its Irish Historic Towns Atlas series which has to date completed eight fascicles. Bray, the ninth, is due next month. The atlas is part of a European project initiated by the International Commission for the History of Towns. The Irish Historic Towns Atlas has played a major part in the shaping of the methodology of Irish urban geography by drawing on and combining the expertise of historians, geographers, archaeologists and architectural historians. Each fascicle comprises maps and topographical information drawn from original sources, accompanied by specialist essays.
Irish Towns is a practical reference guide to urban sources for students and non-specialist amateur historians interested in exploring the heritage of their own and other Irish towns. That the co-editors of Irish Towns are William Nolan and Anngret Simms is significant. Nolan, who lectures in geography at UCD, is also the mastermind behind Geography Publications and its pioneering History and Society series of County Studies. Ten volumes of these inter-disciplinary essays cataloguing the counties of Ireland have already been published, the most recent being County Down (1997). Anngret Simms, Associate Professor of Geography at UCD, has been central to the Irish Historic Towns Atlas and here includes a lively account of researching the Kells atlas.
In her comprehensive introduction, she asks "could it be that the reluctance to accept towns as part of the Irish heritage is related to the difficulty of defining our cultural identity?" She goes on to point out that "The political leaders of the first generation after independence evoked an image of Irish society which was almost exclusively rural."
It is ironic that the formation of Ireland's urban network benefited greatly from repeated colonisation. This is not unique to Ireland. Nor should it be viewed as entirely negative. "Medieval colonisation movements," notes Simms, "helped spread cultural innovations and foremost among those was the idea of the chartered town, that is, a settlement with a specific town law. For a long time it was not appreciated in these [colonised] countries that many of the present-day towns have roots that are firmly embedded in the pre-colonial past. This is true of Wales and Ireland, for example, where Anglo-Norman settlement was superimposed on Celtic settlement."
Towns are certainly an important element in colonisation. It is also important to acknowledge that town formation in Ireland dates from several distinct periods. Archaeologists have already established that nucleated settlements or proto-towns existed in Ireland before the arrival of the Anglo-Normans. Ireland's oldest towns, dating to the later 10th and 11th centuries, are associated with either Gaelic ecclesiastical sites or Viking seaports which date to the period between the 9th and the 12th centuries.
As Simms points out, the Anglo-Normans introduced specific town law. Their arrival also led directly to a century of new town building. An accompanying map illustrates the various phases of settlement, although separate maps would have been more effective.
After a general survey of the evolution of Irish towns, the emphasis moves to locating the sources and learning how to use them. Historical geographer John Andrews, author of A Paper Landscape (1975) and Shapes of Ireland: Maps and their makers (1997), contributes a characteristically concise article on the use of maps. Urging their wider use, he seeks the help of researchers to rectify the tendency to view maps as separate from written sources.
Among the many qualities unique to a map is its selectivity, which does not necessarily mean exclusivity. "A map is more selective than a picture: absence from its surface does not imply non-existence on the ground. At the same time the map is less selective than a passage of prose." Another important point he makes is that map-making is a specialist skill and "the cartographic draughtsman often has no first-hand knowledge of the area he is mapping" and so is "vulnerable to errors of transcription and comprehension".
Discussing the role of estate maps which developed from the 16th and 17th-century plantation surveys, he warns of the potential risks facing any urban historian who chooses to ignore these surveys. "A very few of them are genuinely urban, naming the occupants of individual houses. Others are more rarely and more capriciously informative." The mapping of estates, tenements and individual buildings became increasingly common as the landlords of the post-plantation era asserted themselves. Elsewhere Jacinta Prunty examines the insights provided by estate records.
Throughout the book, effective use is made of maps, prints and photographs, while Rionach Ni Neill provides a specific section on these sources and their role in helping us imagine the experience of urban life during different stages of history. There is also an interesting note on buildings which classifies the various types of Georgian houses. The built environment itself is an important historical source, as are church records which supply genealogical and demographic information. Raymond Refausse comments on the underestimated influence the Quakers had on Irish history.
Always vital in researching social history are the newspaper, journals and directories of the day - a device Joyce used to such effect in Ulysses. Irish and English-language literary works, particularly memoirs, are rich sources, as William Nolan points out, citing works as diverse as Austin Clarke's Twice Round the Blackchurch (1962) and The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (1991).
Irish Towns is presented matter-of-factly and deliberately, its only agenda to provide those interested in investigating their heritage with the information and necessary methods. Exciting, practical and original, this precise guide opens a route through the layers of the past.