Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
OVER 175,000 historical records which were lost in the 1922 explosion and fire which destroyed the Public Records Office in the Four Courts have been recovered and made available online.
The records have been made freely available from today to mark the 103rd anniversary of the Public Record Office explosion, which was located in the Four Courts.
The records are available on the website of the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland and work to replace and digitise the more than 175,000 historical records involved more than 75 partner archives and libraries across Ireland and the word.
Dr Ciarán Wallace, co-director of the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland, remarked that the team has found records in archives and libraries around Ireland, both north and south, and also around Britain and the world.
Speaking to RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Wallace said: “Wherever Irish people went, records seem to go.
“And English administrators who’d worked here might go back to England with the records that they had accumulated in their time here as senior officers in Ireland.”
Wallace explained that the work involves examining the catalogues of its 75 partners and once the team recognises a name in the collections, they ask to see the papers of those donors.
“Suddenly, up comes records that are copies made before 1922, in the days before photocopiers and scanners, when copies are made longhand.
“So these are centuries of transcriptions that have been scattered all around the globe and on virtualtreasury.ie we’re able to bring them back into one central location.”
The records also includes 60,000 names from 19th century censuses, which were previously unknown or unavailable.
When asked how the census material was fashioned together, Wallace praised the work of his colleague Dr Brian Gurrin.
“Before 1922, the census exists in the Public Record Office,” explained Wallace.
“You could hire a genealogist to go into the archive and trace up your family history by hand.
“You then go off with your family history under your arm but when the genealogist retires or dies, their notes get left into the archive.
“It’s finding those notes, sometimes scrawled and scribbled, taken from the census that was then burnt in 1922.”
And when asked to pick out something from the more than 175,000 historical documents that fascinated him, Wallace pointed to a document in the medieval accounts from around 1284, of records of supplies going to build a king’s castle in Roscommon.
He also pointed to an Irish language letter from Co Donegal penned in around 1661.
“On the road between Donegal town and Barnesmore Gap in June 1661,” said Wallace, “the local English authorities seized a letter which was written in Gaelic script.
They couldn’t interpret the letter or get anybody in the locality to interpret it.
“So they thought this was highly suspicious and they sent it down to Dublin for investigation and it then gets sent over to London.”
When it was translated, it turned out to be a letter by the Franciscan Order.
Wallace explained: “Oliver Cromwell is dead, the new King has come in, and Franciscans are thinking, ‘maybe we can get better dispensation under the new monarch coming in’.
“Of course, the English can’t read this letter and they think it’s something highly suspicious.
“It ends up on an intelligence file in London, where it has sat for over 400 years and is available online our website.”
Meanwhile, the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland has over 350,000 historical records on its website, from medieval rolls to the pre-Famine census.
“There are portals, with one for medieval research, the 1798 Rebellion and a population portal,” said Wallace, who said that within these portals people will be able to easily search for the particular area of interest they have.
have your say