A history of Ireland in 10,000 maps

National Library of Ireland spends €2.3m on ‘extraordinary’ collection – that would have taken them half a century to put together

THE director of the National Library of Ireland has said it would have taken ‘half a century’ for a national cultural institution to put together an important collection of maps and prints acquired in one go from a private collector last week.

The Bonar Law collection was purchased from the former gallery owner Andrew Bonar Law, for €2.3m and includes over 19,000 items – of which 10,000 are maps – dating back to the 1500s, and making up ‘the most complete visual record of Ireland’.

Mr Bonar Law is the grandson of Andrew Bonar Law, who was British

‘It’s a microcosm of the history of Ireland’

Prime Minister between 1922 and 1923.

National Library of Ireland (NLI) director Dr Audrey Whitty said the maps are the ‘mainstay’ of the collection, which was built up over half a century with the assistance of Mr Bonar Law’s daughter Charlotte.

Dr Whitty told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘By its nature it’s talking about the outside knowledge of Ireland, so it’s an extraordinary collection because it’s a microcosm of the history of Ireland through map drawing – in terms of who went into what parts of the country, at what time, through what campaigns and particularly their aftermath.’

Many of the early maps were drawn by Italians, who were ‘world class cartographers’ before the British and Dutch mastered the art. And Dr Whitty said the roundabout influence of the Irish on the Renaissance helped mapmakers get an ever more accurate picture of what Ireland looked like.

‘During the Renaissance, an awful lot of what had been discovered during ancient Greek and Roman times was rediscovered again,’ she said. ‘That goes back to Ireland because Irish monks and scholars would have saved those ancient Greek and Roman texts during the early medieval or Dark Ages in Europe.

‘If you go to places like St. Gallen in Switzerland or Bobbio in Italy, which were founded by Irish monks, the texts in those libraries preserve the ancient Greek and Roman materials that were then only revitalised from the 1400s and 1500s during the Renaissance.

‘We think of the Renaissance as an Italian moment, but they wouldn’t have had that material if it hadn’t been for the Irish saving those texts and transcribing them in the first place.

‘So I think it’s almost serendipity that you have Ireland being represented more accurately then from the 16th century onwards.’

The collection will be housed at University College Cork on a loan arrangement and will be digitised and made available online in the coming months. It includes over 90% of the listed maps and prints of Ireland ever produced.