The immeasurable contribution of the cartographer and author Tim Robinson to this island's heritage was marked by the Irish Institution of Surveyors at a reception in Galway last night.
Mr Robinson, who won a European Conservation Award for his radical maps of the Burren in Co Clare, the Aran Islands and Connemara, received a special presentation from the institution's vice-president, Mr Paddy Prendergast, at a function in Kenny's Art Gallery. Mr Prendergast is also president of the Council of European Geodetic Surveyors.
The Yorkshire-man, who is soon to retire from making maps for his company, Folding Landscapes, is "the last of a dying breed, who manually produce their maps in manuscript form with pen and ink", Mr Prendergast said. The Ordnance Survey's map production lines were automated in 1987.
Mr Robinson's representation of the landscape has been more than a clinical record, Mr Prendergast said. His treatment of geographical place names, and particularly old Irish place names, has been invaluable. The Ordnance Survey had produced an anglicised version of such names when it mapped Ireland in the 1820s to 1840s.
The Irish Institution of Surveyors intends to lodge Mr Robinson's maps with Galway County Library to ensure that the information is "stored for posterity", Mr Prendergast said. "The Galway Gaeltacht, the county and the nation is forever in Tim's debt for his contribution to both cartography and culture in this region," he said.
Apart from his cartography work, Mr Robinson is author of Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage and Labyrinth. He has also spearheaded the Save the Roundstone Bog campaign in Connemara.
