“In writing the history of a place-name one has taken a long step towards writing the history of the place itself.” -Thomas Larcom, Director General of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland.
Between 1824 and 1848, The island of Ireland become the first country in the history of the world to have a six-inch to one-mile scale map made of its entire surface.
At the time of the mapping, the Island of Ireland was a single geo-political entity which was part of the British Empire. Considering the map was made through the prism of British colonialism, it led to a number of problems, especially with regard to ideas of native representation, land ownership, language and cultural identity. A group known as the Ordnance Survey (OS) was established within the British military and sent to Ireland to map it. The island of Ireland became a test site for the tools and methods of modern cartography. These methods were later used to map the entire British Empire and then became a key part of westward expansionism across America. The first Ordnance Survey map was the only map ever produced of the island of Ireland as a single united country. In 1921 the maps were used to draw a line across the land, a border dividing the island into two states, this partition still exists today.
Over the last three years, I have been travelling around the island to the original triangulation points used by the surveyors. The pillars left in the landscape mark the sites where readings and calculations to create the map were taken. I followed an old map which listed the points where the surveyors took these readings. By revisiting these sites I was attempting to see Ireland as it was, rather than as it is, which is a translated, archived, folded landscape.
My work is not meant to act as a visual retelling of the map or the story of the Ordnance Survey in Ireland. Rather, it poses the question, was the map an accurate anglicised representation of the island, Or a deeply problematic colonial attempt to rewrite history which led to the construction of contemporary Ireland?