The Great Parchment Book website is not the only online resource for the study of 17th century Ireland, its people, places and history. Trinity College Dublin has been involved with two projects presented through dedicated websites which explore sources which can be used alongside the Great Parchment Book: the 1641 Depositions; and the 1656-8 Down Survey of Ireland.

The 1641 Online Depositions Website provides a fully searchable digital edition of the 1641 Depositions at Trinity College Dublin Library, comprising transcripts and images of all 8,000 depositions, examinations and associated materials in which Protestant men and women of all classes told of their experiences following the outbreak of the rebellion by the Catholic Irish in October, 1641. The 1641 Depositions Project had similar aims to the Great Parchment Book project to conserve, digitise, transcribe and make the depositions available online in a fully TEI compliant format. The website not only gives access to the depositions themselves, but also provides technical information about the conservation, digitisation and transcription.

1641 Depositions

Taken in the years 1656-1658, the Down Survey of Ireland is the first ever detailed land survey on a national scale anywhere in the world. The survey sought to measure all the land to be forfeited by the Catholic Irish in order to facilitate its redistribution to Merchant Adventurers and English soldiers. Copies of these maps have survived in dozens of libraries and archives throughout Ireland and Britain, as well as in the National Library of France. This Project has brought together for the first time in over 300 years all the surviving maps, digitised them and made them available as a public online resource. There are two main components to the website. The Down Survey Maps section comprises digital images of all the surviving Down Survey maps at parish, barony and county level and all the descriptions (terrier) of each barony and parish that accompanied the original maps. The Historical GIS section, brings together the maps and related contemporaneous sources – Books of Survey and Distribution, the 1641 Depositions, the 1659 Census – in a Geographical Information System (GIS). All these sources have been georeferenced with 19th-century Ordnance Survey maps, Google Maps and satellite imagery.

Down Survey 2