Northern Ireland historic maps

[parlconst]

As the first iteration of the parlconst project is nearing completion, I'm starting to look at boundary maps for Northern Ireland.  Any help with identifying sources would be most welcome.

I'm fortunate enough to have built a nearly complete personal collection of Boundary Commission reports since 1868 (although not for the review which created the new constituencies in Northern Ireland  in 1922, following partition.)

However the maps included in the Second and Third Periodical Reports have little detail (and in the case of the Third Periodical Report makes no comparison of changes to the previous boundaries), which is making it quite difficult to precisely determine those constituency boundaries within split counties which came into effect in 1974.

The National Library of Scotland and the Vision of Britain map collections do not cover Ireland.

The UK Data Service has boundary files for the Northern Ireland constituencies extant from 1997-2010, but nothing earlier.

The OSNI does make available some historical maps via its PRONI viewer, but I'm finding this a bit patchy - I'm not sure if this is because the collections are incomplete or whether it is just being temperamental in what it displays when I access it. (Also, for example, while I have from the Boundary Commission report a list of Electoral Divisions used to define the 1974 constituencies, the available OSNI maps don't show these and they don't seem to correlate exactly with parish boundaries.)

So unless I'm missing something, I fear that my analyses for Northern Ireland may have to be rather cruder than for the rest of the UK.

[islington]

Apr 19, 2023 14:20:21 GMT parlconst said:

As the first iteration of the parlconst project is nearing completion, I'm starting to look at boundary maps for Northern Ireland.  Any help with identifying sources would be most welcome.

I'm fortunate enough to have built a nearly complete personal collection of Boundary Commission reports since 1868 (although not for the review which created the new constituencies in Northern Ireland  in 1922, following partition.)

However the maps included in the Second and Third Periodical Reports have little detail (and in the case of the Third Periodical Report makes no comparison of changes to the previous boundaries), which is making it quite difficult to precisely determine those constituency boundaries within split counties which came into effect in 1974.

The National Library of Scotland and the Vision of Britain map collections do not cover Ireland.

The UK Data Service has boundary files for the Northern Ireland constituencies extant from 1997-2010, but nothing earlier.

The OSNI does make available some historical maps via its PRONI viewer, but I'm finding this a bit patchy - I'm not sure if this is because the collections are incomplete or whether it is just being temperamental in what it displays when I access it. (Also, for example, while I have from the Boundary Commission report a list of Electoral Divisions used to define the 1974 constituencies, the available OSNI maps don't show these and they don't seem to correlate exactly with parish boundaries.)

So unless I'm missing something, I fear that my analyses for Northern Ireland may have to be rather cruder than for the rest of the UK.

There will be other posters whose Irish knowledge greatly exceeds mine but I think I'm right in saying that the 1922 seats in NI did not result from a review as we'd normally understand it but from the implementation in respect of NI only of provisions in the Government of Ireland Act 1920 that were originally intended to apply to Ireland as a whole. The effect would have been to take account of Home Rule by reducing Ireland from 101 territorial MPs to only 42, to be achieved by combining the constituencies drawn in 1918 to form bigger seats returning either one or two members. However, the Free State ultimately did not take part in this arrangement so it applied only in NI. In Belfast three of the nine seats drawn in 1918 were merged to form Belfast W and the remaining six were paired off to form N, E and S. Elsewhere, Co Derry and Co Armagh got one MP each and Co Down and Antrim each got two, elected at large. Tyrone & Fermanagh were merged to form a two-member seat. So NI was reduced to 12 territorial seats but it was done by eliminating lines, not by drawing new ones.

Yes, PRONI is very patchy.

[YL]

Apr 19, 2023 16:54:18 GMT islington said:

Apr 19, 2023 14:20:21 GMT parlconst said:

As the first iteration of the parlconst project is nearing completion, I'm starting to look at boundary maps for Northern Ireland.  Any help with identifying sources would be most welcome.

I'm fortunate enough to have built a nearly complete personal collection of Boundary Commission reports since 1868 (although not for the review which created the new constituencies in Northern Ireland  in 1922, following partition.)

However the maps included in the Second and Third Periodical Reports have little detail (and in the case of the Third Periodical Report makes no comparison of changes to the previous boundaries), which is making it quite difficult to precisely determine those constituency boundaries within split counties which came into effect in 1974.

The National Library of Scotland and the Vision of Britain map collections do not cover Ireland.

The UK Data Service has boundary files for the Northern Ireland constituencies extant from 1997-2010, but nothing earlier.

The OSNI does make available some historical maps via its PRONI viewer, but I'm finding this a bit patchy - I'm not sure if this is because the collections are incomplete or whether it is just being temperamental in what it displays when I access it. (Also, for example, while I have from the Boundary Commission report a list of Electoral Divisions used to define the 1974 constituencies, the available OSNI maps don't show these and they don't seem to correlate exactly with parish boundaries.)

So unless I'm missing something, I fear that my analyses for Northern Ireland may have to be rather cruder than for the rest of the UK.

There will be other posters whose Irish knowledge greatly exceeds mine but I think I'm right in saying that the 1922 seats in NI did not result from a review as we'd normally understand it but from the implementation in respect of NI only of provisions in the Government of Ireland Act 1920 that were originally intended to apply to Ireland as a whole. The effect would have been to take account of Home Rule by reducing Ireland from 101 territorial MPs to only 42, to be achieved by combining the constituencies drawn in 1918 to form bigger seats returning either one or two members. However, the Free State ultimately did not take part in this arrangement so it applied only in NI. In Belfast three of the nine seats drawn in 1918 were merged to form Belfast W and the remaining six were paired off to form N, E and S. Elsewhere, Co Derry and Co Armagh got one MP each and Co Down and Antrim each got two, elected at large. Tyrone & Fermanagh were merged to form a two-member seat. So NI was reduced to 12 territorial seats but it was done by eliminating lines, not by drawing new ones.

Indeed: Fifth Schedule to the 1920 Act

Note that Nicholas Whyte's site has outline maps of the constituencies (e.g. here) which obviously aren't detailed enough for parlconst's purposes but they look like whatever they are based on might be. So it might be worth contacting him.

[obsie]

There's a map of the post-1924 partly-gerrymandered electoral divisions here. Outside of the Belfast Rural District, some expansions of town boundaries, and some later gerrymanderings in Derry, Armagh city, and Omagh, they remained unchanged until 1973. They were used for the definition of the 1950 constituencies (no changes were made in 1955 except where town boundaries - possibly Portrush, Newry, Lisburn - had changed). The 1974 boundaries used the new DED boundaries in west Belfast which can be seen on the later editions of the PRONI website.

Maps of the 1973 wards are here. These used to be publicly available on the OSNI website until that got rejigged with the transformation to LPSNI. These were used for the 1983 redrawing.

These are "works in progress" based on the publicly-accessible townland shapefiles from OSi and OSNI with some needlework done along the border to make the two sets seamless.

drive.google.com/file/d/1qpkXKexq84SNyPXgYMx0uBs5pqJ0mODG/view?usp=sharing (1911 electoral divisions for the whole island - 26/32 counties completed, the remainder in mid and north Leinster)

drive.google.com/file/d/1sgF0zcGOI76FJPJNBCnTIrlEtroUMc3u/view?usp=sharing (Civil parishes for the whole island - 25/32 counties completed, the remainder in mid and north Leinster)

[therealriga]

I do have the map of provisional recommendations for the 3rd periodical review (c.1980.) It only shows the wards, not streets covered or anything like that. I could post it, but it would be just as easy to use the links obsie posted above.

[parlconst]

Apr 19, 2023 18:13:49 GMT obsie said:

There's a map of the post-1924 partly-gerrymandered electoral divisions here. Outside of the Belfast Rural District, some expansions of town boundaries, and some later gerrymanderings in Derry, Armagh city, and Omagh, they remained unchanged until 1973. They were used for the definition of the 1950 constituencies (no changes were made in 1955 except where town boundaries - possibly Portrush, Newry, Lisburn - had changed). The 1974 boundaries used the new DED boundaries in west Belfast which can be seen on the later editions of the PRONI website.

Maps of the 1973 wards are here. These used to be publicly available on the OSNI website until that got rejigged with the transformation to LPSNI. These were used for the 1983 redrawing.

These are "works in progress" based on the publicly-accessible townland shapefiles from OSi and OSNI with some needlework done along the border to make the two sets seamless.

drive.google.com/file/d/1qpkXKexq84SNyPXgYMx0uBs5pqJ0mODG/view?usp=sharing (1911 electoral divisions for the whole island - 27/32 counties completed, the remainder in mid and north Leinster)

drive.google.com/file/d/1sgF0zcGOI76FJPJNBCnTIrlEtroUMc3u/view?usp=sharing (Civil parishes for the whole island - 26/32 counties completed, the remainder in mid and north Leinster)

Thank you - these are very useful.  The shapefiles, in particular, will save me a lot of work.

One query - you say that the new DED boundaries in West Belfast can be seen on the PRONI website. Maybe it's just me, but I can't seem to find them.  For example, I was looking for the boundaries of Andersonstown, Ballygammon and Ladybrook EDs in Lisburn RD which helped form West Belfast in 1974. The most obvious layer would be the 6" 1952-1967 layer, but that is blank for me in the West Belfast area - around Belfast this layer only displays a small area in the north of the city.  The layers chronologically before and after don't show these EDs - the more recent one is after the expansion of Belfast, and the earlier one I think only shows parishes. 

[parlconst]

Apr 19, 2023 18:51:47 GMT therealriga said:

I do have the map of provisional recommendations for the 3rd periodical review (c.1980.) It only shows the wards, not streets covered or anything like that. I could post it, but it would be just as easy to use the links obsie posted above.

Thanks - I've got a decent handle on the 3rd periodical review boundaries, as the 4th review has a good map showing changes from the previous boundaries and I can work back from that.

[obsie]

www.thegazette.co.uk/Belfast/issue/2209/page/336