Booking has opened for Ireland and the Tudor State, an online only event hosted by the British Library, Wednesday 26 January 2022, 19.30-20.45.

Join a panel of experts to explore Ireland’s complex relationship with England in the period before the Great Parchment Book when the Tudor monarchs strove to complete the conquest begun some 400 years previously. The combination of social and cultural assimilation, military force and colonisation by Protestant English settlers has considerable resonance with the 17th century plantation. The panel will look at Ireland before the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558, the impact of her reign and its legacy.

Further details and booking information are here.

It would appear that the younger, ambitious sons of English landed gentry and Scottish lairds, who were not going to inherit the family manor, took prominent roles in the various military campaigns and plantations of Ireland, and of North America, in the 17th century. Brian Mitchell looks at one such story concerning the Hillhouse family of Freehall, Limavady, County Londonderry in the Haberdashers’ proportion.

Starting Point

Family tradition in the United States records that Samuel Hillhouse, born c.1707, was from Limavady, County Londonderry and came to America as a young man. His parents were John and Rachel and they had a house/estate called Free Hall or Freehall, and his grandfather Abraham came from Failford, Ayrshire, Scotland.

Identifying the location of Freehall

Thomas Raven’s map of the county of Londonderry, 1622 (copyright Trustees of Lambeth Palace Library)

During the 17th century Plantation of Ulster, the townland of ‘Free Hall or Moneyvennon’ in the civil parish of Aghanloo, located three miles northeast of the town of Limavady, County Londonderry, was granted to the Haberdashers’ Company of the city of London. Most of the Haberdashers’ proportion was located in Aghanloo parish. The castle and bawn of the Habersdashers stood on the River Roe at a place known as Ballycastle which was probably the site of a Norman castle. The Haberdashers built a linear village at Artikelly, one mile from their castle, consisting of one street with two rows of thatched single-storey cottages set in rectangular plots. Freehall was located one mile to the east of the castle at Ballycastle and one mile to the northeast of the village of Artikelly.

Church registers

Church registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials, with their ability to build and confirm family links, are the building blocks of family history. However, to the family historian seeking 17th and 18th century ancestors in Ulster, with a few notable exceptions, church registers are frequently irrelevant, owing to their nonexistence, Unfortunately, there are no surviving 17th or 18th century church registers for Aghanloo Parish.

It is always worth checking the registers of the Church of Ireland (Protestant) Cathedral as it was in effect the parish church of the Diocese, and in the case of the Diocese of Derry that is St. Columb’s Cathedral in the city of Londonderry, 16 miles west of Limavady, the registers of which date back to 1642. An examination of its registers of baptisms, marriages and burials (which have been transcribed, indexed and published in three books from 1642 to 1775) reveal seven Hillhouse burial entries (including potential spelling variations of the surname):

Died: 17 November 1700, Mary, daughter of James and Lettis Hillis
Died: 28 August 1702, Henry, son of William and Lettis Hillis
Died: 6 November 1705, Jane, daughter of William and Lettis Hilhous
Died: 4 September 1714, Ann wife of William Hillows
Died: 12 June 1730, Ann, wife of Abraham Hillhouse
Died: 2 June 1730, Forgison, son of Abraham and Ann Hillhouse
Died: 27 May 1732, John Hillhouse

Beyond church registers

A wide range of sources are available, however, and an examination of them confirms that the Hillhouse family were a significant family in the Limavady area throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. Indeed, an examination of these sources reveals that two Hillhouse families were settled in County Londonderry from the early years of the Plantation prior to the1641 Rebellion, one in Freehall, Limavady and the other in Dunboe parish, Coleraine.

Wills

Although there is no guarantee that an ancestor made a will or, indeed, that a will has survived, as the bulk of Ireland’s pre-1922 testamentary records (wills, administrations, probates, etc.) were lost in the destruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland during the Civil War in 1922, I would always recommend a search of any indexes that exist.

An examination of the Indexes to Irish Wills: Volume V, Derry and Raphoe, 1612-1858 (edited by Gertrude Thrift, Phillimore & Co, London, 1920) identified the following 17th century Hillhouse entries in County Londonderry: Abraham Hillhous, Ardikelly, parish Aghanloo, proved 1676; Adam Hillhous, Dunboe proved 1635.

Hence, it would appear that Abraham Hillhouse died c. 1676 at Ardikelly (spelt as Artikelly today) in the parish of Aghanloo and that an Adam Hillhouse died c. 1635 in Dunboe parish (just to the west of the town of Coleraine). Of course, what this source can’t do is tell us the nature of the link, if any, between Abraham of Artikelly and Adam of Dunboe.

The Great Parchment Book

Abraham Hillhouse (gentleman) was settled in Limavady by 1639 as the Great Parchment Book for the Haberdashers’ Proportion reveals:

On 17 August 1639, the Commissioners concluded and agreed that Robert McLeland, Gavin Kelsoe, Hugh Boyle, Alexander [?], Abraham Hilhouse and John McLeland shall have and hold all those six townlands called Artikelly, [?], Gortamoney, Maheraskeagh, Tullaherrenmore and Tullaherrenbegg in Aghanloo and have one weekly market on Wednesday in the town of Artikelly and three yearly fairs in town of Artikelly.

The minute books of Borough of Limavady

By 1665 Abraham Hillhouse was a serving Burgess of Limavady Corporation and in that same year John Hillhouse and William Hillhouse were ‘admitted and sworn Freemen’ of Limavady.

Sir Thomas Phillips described as “a pushing soldier of fortune” first arrived in Ireland as a military commander in 1599 and in 1610 he was granted 13,100 acres of land at Limavady which included O’Cahan’s castle, on a cliff overhanging the River Roe. One mile from the castle he commenced the building of the “Newtown of Limavady” which was laid out in a cruciform road pattern. By 1622, 18 one-storey houses and an inn had been built centred on the crossroads which contained a flagpole, a cross and stocks.

Newtown-Limavady (known as Limavady from 1870) was incorporated as a town on 31 March 1613 with a charter granted by King James I. According to this Charter the town was to appoint a Provost and 12 Burgesses who were to form the common council or Corporation, and to return two Members of Parliament (which ceased with the Act of Union which created, in 1801, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland).

Corporation records, the minute books of the Common Council of Limavady Corporation, date from 1659. Each set of minutes begins with date of the meeting of the Common Council and list of members in attendance. Edited abstracts from these minute books have been transcribed and published in Records of the Town of Limavady, 1609 to 1808 by E. M. F-G Boyle (published 1912, republished as Boyle’s Records of Limavady, 1609 to 1808 by North-West Books, Limavady, 1989). The following Hillhouse references are recorded:

Corporation Meeting of 24 June 1665: In attendance, Abraham Hillhouse, Burgess of the Corporation of Newtown-Limavady; John Hillhouse and William Hillhouse were ‘admitted and sworn Freemen’.

Corporation Meeting of 24 June 1696: William Hillhouse sworn Freeman.

Corporation Meeting of 29 September 1708: William Hillhouse sworn Freeman.

Corporation Meeting of 14 October 1718: In attendance, William Hillhouse, Constable.

The Registry of Deeds

An examination of the records of the Registry of Deeds confirm that the Hillhouse family were still residing at Freehall, near Limavady in the middle years of the 18th century. In 1745 the estate of Freehall passed from Abraham Hillhouse to his son Abraham James Hillhouse, who was a merchant in London, and a marriage settlement, dated 1717, shows that Abraham Hillhouse of Freehall married Ann Ferguson, daughter of Reverend Andrew Ferguson of Burt, County Donegal.

1641 Rebellion

Thomas Raven’s plan of Londonderry ca. 1622 (copyright Trustees of Lambeth Palace Library)

In 1641 the Plantation of Ulster faced its first serious crisis. On 22 October 1641 the native Irish, under Sir Phelim O’Neill, rose in rebellion in the counties of Londonderry and Tyrone, and the walled city of Londonderry became a refuge for Protestant settlers. A “League of the Captains of Londonderry” was set up to guard the city, with the raising of nine companies of foot soldiers, each assigned with a particular section of the walls of Derry to repair and to defend. By April 1642 the city was close to starvation, with the rebel forces led by Sir Phelim O’Neill camped at Strabane. However, the threatened siege of Derry was lifted on 17 May 1642 by the defeat of the Irish army, led by the O’Cahans (O’Kanes), near Dungiven, County Derry by an army consisting of east Donegal settlers and four companies of soldiers from Derry city.

A fully searchable digital edition of the 1641 Depositions at Trinity College Dublin Library can be searched at http://1641.tcd.ie. The 1641 Depositions consist of 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.

A surname search of ‘Hilhouse’ records four depositions relating to the death of John Hilhouse of Gortycavan in Dunboe Parish, County Derry, three miles west of the town of Coleraine.

Seemingly, after defeating and killing a party of English and Scottish men garrisoned at Garvagh, County Londonderry about 20 December 1641, Rory Duffe McCormacke and his brothers Art and Edmund McCormacke and about 30 to 40 men armed with long pikes set upon the British at ‘Gortecavan in the parish of Dunboe’ and killed John Hilhouse.

It is possible, but not proven, that John Hilhouse of Gortycavan, Dunboe parish, who died during the 1641 Rebellion, was the son of Adam Hilhous of Dunboe whose will was proved in 1635.

Fighters of Derry

Nearly fifty years later the Plantation of Ulster faced another potential reversal to its fortunes in the events surrounding the 1689 Siege of Derry, and a Captain Abraham Hillhouse of Coleraine is recorded as a ‘defender’ of Derry.

William R. Young’s Fighters of Derry Their Deeds and Descendants: Being a Chronicle of Events in Ireland during the Revolutionary Period 1688-1691 (published by Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1932) is a unique and unrivalled source for tracing 17th century Plantation of Ulster ancestors. This book names and, in many cases, provides biographical detail of 1660 “Defenders” and 352 officers of the “Jacobite Army”.

‘Defenders’ refers to all those people who were named in contemporary sources and accounts as playing an active or supportive role in the successful Williamite campaign of 1689 to 1691, which included the Siege of Derry of 1689.

The Williamite War in Ireland, 1689-1691, was, in effect, the struggle for the English throne between the deposed James II, the last Catholic monarch of the three Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland who had the support of Louis XIV of France, and William of Orange with the backing of the English Parliament.

Young’s book names the prominent supporters of Protestant interests throughout Ireland at this time, including those named on list of attainted in James’s Dublin parliament. James II’s Parliament, which met in Dublin on 7 May 1689 and sat for three weeks, passed ‘The Bill of Attainder’ which confiscated estates and condemned without trial over 2,500 persons, of whom 921 were from Ulster, of high treason. This book lists:

Defender 739: ‘Captain Abraham Hillhouse, of Coleraine, defender, so described, is among the attainted in James’ Dublin Parliament, and his signature is on the address to King William after the relief’ [after the lifting of the Siege of Derry of 1689].

Condemnation of assassination attempt on William III in 1696

In the Corporation of Londonderry minute book of 16 April 1696 (pp132-133, Volume 2, January 1688 to 20 July 1704) are tabulated in three columns, the names of 226 citizens of the city of Londonderry who signed a resolution expressing condemnation of the plot to assassinate King William. A James Hillhouse was recorded as one of these signatories.

William III ruled jointly, from 1689, with his wife, Mary II, until her death on 28 December 1694. There was a considerable surge in support for William, who reigned as King of England, Scotland and Ireland until his death on 8 March 1702, following the exposure of a Jacobite plan to assassinate him in 1696.

The Corporation of Londonderry minute books, which date from 1673, can be browsed online at https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/information-and-services/search-archives-online/londonderry-corporation-records.

Local history publications

Local history publications can provide a wealth of material on the history of families and of place. Charles Knowles Bolton in Scotch Irish Pioneers in Ulster and America (first published in 1910), on page 113, writes:

“The Rev. James Hillhouse was born about 1688, the son of John and Rachel Hillhouse, owners of a large estate called Freehall, in County Londonderry. He studied at Glasgow under the famous Professor Simson and was ordained by Derry presbytery October 15, 1718. Coming to America in 1720, he was called to a church in the second parish of New London in 1722, where he died December 15, 1740. His son William was a member of the Continental Congress, and William’s son James was a Senator of the United States.”

With all this information the following family tree linking the Hillhouse family in Scotland, Ireland and America can be constructed:

In conclusion

It is well known that many people from Scotland migrated to Ulster throughout the 17th century and that many of their descendants settled for a few years or a few generations in Ireland before emigrating to North America in the 18th century.

It is claimed that 56% of Americans with Irish roots are of Protestant stock, whose roots in many cases can be traced back to the Scots-Irish (also known as Ulster-Scots) who settled on the frontier of colonial America in the 18th century –  Pennsylvania, Virginia and the Carolinas. Potentially some 20 million Americans today have Scots-Irish origins.

Compiled by Brian Mitchell, Derry Genealogy, www.derry.rootsireland.ie

The story of Henry Conway and the Plantation of Londonderry

Henry Conway was sent to Ireland in 1623 by the Vintners’ Company to resolve the finances of Vintnerstown, formerly Bellaghy, the main settlement of the Vintners’ Portion in the barony of Loughinsholin; the town had been granted to the Company in 1613 as part of the plantation of Londonderry. Henry’s relationship with the company was tenuous but his position was improved by the intervention of the Crown which led to the compilation of the Great Parchment Book. However, it was disrupted again during the 1641 Irish Rebellion when he was accused of acting “most treacherously”. Dr Bethany Marsh from the University of Oxford tells the story of Henry and looks at sources for tracing refugees who travelled to London after the outbreak of the Rebellion.

The Vintners Company and the Plantation of Ireland

On the 17 December 1613 a meeting was held at the Guildhall in London to determine which parcels of land would be allocated to the livery companies of London for the plantation of Londonderry in Ireland. The Vintners’ Company, one of the Great Twelve livery companies, was granted 32,600 acres of land in the barony of Loughinsholin. The first agent to be employed by the Company was named Henry Jackson, who arrived in Ireland in 1614. Jackson chose the town of Bellaghy to be the main settlement of the Vintners portion and renamed the town Vintnerstown. The construction of new houses began in 1615, but progress was slow. Consequently, the Company employed John Rowley to continue the work.

Rowley had been an eminent figure in the early years of the plantation. In 1610 he had been appointed as the Chief Agent for the Honourable the Irish Society of London (the consortium of livery companies invested in the plantation of Ireland) and served as the Mayor of Londonderry. Rowley, however, was known to be a sly character. He was found guilty of defrauding city expenses in Londonderry to line his own pockets, though surprisingly he was never dismissed from office.

In 1617 Rowley died and his land in Bellaghy devolved to Baptist Jones, who had been an Agent for the Salters’ Company. Like Rowley, Jones was also of questionable character. In 1616 he was arrested by the Salters’ on the charges of misappropriating funds and failing to fulfil the duties of his commission. The court found him innocent, but the Salters’ Company pushed him to vacate his land and paid him £291 11s 8d in settlement costs. Shortly following his dismissal, Jones formed a partnership with Rowley. Upon Rowley’s death, the Vintners’ Company granted Jones a new fifty seven year lease of land at an annual rent of £120.

While Jones’s trustworthiness as an Agent was dubious, significant building work was completed in Bellaghy under his supervision. In a survey of the Londonderry plantation, conducted by Captain Nicholas Pynnar between 1618 and 1619, it was noted:

“[Bellaghy] is in the Hands of Baptist Jones, Esq., who hath built a Bawn [fortified house or castle] of Brick and Lime, 100 feet square, with two round Flankers, and a good Rampart, which is more than any of the rest have done.”

In 1618 Jones also secured funds to build a church, though his financial troubles meant the building of the church was not completed for several years. Regardless, Jones received a knighthood in 1621 for his work on the plantation. By 1622 many of the buildings in Bellaghy were complete. Thomas Raven’s map of the town shows fifteen timber-framed houses with brick gables, the Bawn at the top of the main street, a market cross and a church.

The appointment of Henry Conway

In 1623 Jones died leaving debts of over £300 to the Vintners’ Company. These debts were taken up by Henry Conway, who was sent to Ireland by the Company to resolve the town’s finances. Conway married Jones’s widow, Elizabeth, and was granted a lease of fifty one years in 1625, on the condition that he pay off Jones’s debts.

Conway was likely appointed due to his military background. The Native Irish were regarded widely in England as barbarous and needed to be bought under control. It was believed that this could be achieved by “rooting out or transporting the barbarous or stubborn sort, and planting civility in their rooms”. In practical terms this meant imposing English laws and customs through the plantation of English and Scottish Protestants. As Edmund Spenser, a poet and advocate of the plantation scheme, wrote: “Nothing doth sooner cause civility in any country than many market towns by reason that the people repairing often thither for their needs will daily learn civil manners”. Military men were essential for protecting the new plantations, particularly following outbreaks of violence against settlers in 1623. Conway had served as a cornet under Sir Arthur Chichester making him an attractive Agent for the Company.

Henry Conway and the Great Parchment Book

Conway’s position with the Vintners’ Company, however, appears tenuous. Throughout the 1620s and 1630s he failed to pay back the money owed to the Company, leaving him dependent on the support of his influential relatives to secure his future. Conway particularly relied on his kinship with Sir Edward Conway, appointed Secretary of State in England in 1623. Sir Edward wrote to Sir William Blake, “being a chief Instrument for the plantation of Ulster in Ireland”, in 1628 requesting Blake to use his connections with the Vintners’ Company to extend Conway’s lease in Londonderry. The implication being that Conway was possibly in danger of losing his estate for failing to pay Jones’s debts.

In the 1630s Conway’s position significantly improved due to the intervention of the Crown. In a case held in the court of Star Chamber it was declared that the London Companies had failed to fulfil their duties of plantation, resulting in the forfeit of all livery company estates to the Crown. By claiming these estates, King Charles I gained the power to create new and more profitable contracts for leases. The Great Parchment Book outlines these new contracts, including a new lease created for Henry Conway [ff. M6r-M7v]. Conway was granted lands in Bellaghy, including the town’s Bawn, and lands in the surrounding area. In return for these lands Conway had to build two “good and sufficient houses of timber, stone or brick in the manner and fashion of English houses”, plant “fifty young trees of oak, ash, and elm fit and likely to grow to be timber trees”, and keep five muskets, five corselets and pikes.

Henry Conway and the 1641 rebellion

On the evening of the 23 October 1641 armed rebellion broke out in Ulster. Members of the Catholic Irish gentry sought reparations for the loss of their lands to Protestant settlers, but the violence soon spread amongst the rest of the Irish Catholic population. The upheaval caused by the rebellion affected everyone in Ireland in some form, including Henry Conway. The vicar of Bellaghy, Charles Anthony, recounted that upon hearing news of the rebellion Conway persuaded all the residents of the town to retreat to the safety of his Bawn. Charles Anthony’s full account can be read on the 1641 Depositions website – MS 839, ff. 096r-097v, Deposition of Charles Anthony (12 June 1642).

It would be a mistake, however, to regard Conway as heroic. From the outset of the rebellion he denied military assistance to neighbouring towns who needed help resisting the rebels. Secret letters were also sent by Conway to rebel leaders to arrange terms of surrender. According to Robert Waringe, a resident of the nearby town of Magherafelt, Conway was in communication with Sir Pheilm O’Neill, an Irish nobleman who was one of the rebellion’s chief conspirators. They agreed that the town would surrender and in exchange the town’s inhabitants would be allowed to leave safely and Conway could retain his personal possessions. For Waringe, Conway acted “most treacherously” and “basely suffered this deponent and the rest that were protestants to be despoiled of their arms and ammunition and left all the other arms and ammunition…to the rebels” [MS 839, ff. 108r-111v, Deposition of Robert Waringe (12 August 1642)].

Refugees and the London metropolis

It is unclear where Conway and his family fled following the surrender of Bellaghy. Like many refugees, it is possible they travelled to England, Scotland, Wales or the Continent for safety and relief. Between 1641 and 1651 thousands of refugees fled to England in the wake of the Irish rebellion and subsequent Confederate Wars, with a large number fleeing specifically to London. The London metropolis was the economic and political hub of the nation, including within its environs the city of Westminster, the Royal Court, the Court of Burgesses, both Houses of Parliament, Guildhall, the Royal Exchange and the port of London. London’s political and economic importance attracted thousands of economic migrants, both foreign and domestic. Consequently, the population of the capital grew significantly during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. By the 1650s London was the largest urban centre in Western Europe, with a population of around 400,000. In perspective, Norwich was the second largest city in England at this time and had a population of only around 20,000 to 30,000. London was a popular destination for wandering refugees by virtue of its size. The large migrant population in the capital made it easier for refugees to find permanent settlement, in comparison to smaller towns and villages where they would be recognised more readily as strangers and likely asked to move out of the area. The presence of Parliament was also attractive to refugees as those of a higher social status were able to petition Parliament for financial assistance.

The accounts of parish officers – churchwardens, constables and overseers of the poor – held at London Metropolitan Archives give an indication of the number of refugees who travelled to London after the outbreak of the Irish rebellion. Churchwardens in the parishes of St. Dunstan in the West and St. Dunstan in the East, for instance, provided relief to a minimum of 502 and 305 refugees respectively between 1641 and 1651. In some accounts the parish officers included interesting details about the people who fled Ireland. Mary Langhon, for example, received 2s 6d on 7 June 1644. She was travelling with her daughter and two grandchildren, their husbands having been “slain in Ireland” [P69/DUN2/B/011/MS02968/003, f. 678v, St. Dunstan in the West Churchwardens’ Accounts (1641-1645)]. On 11 September 1648 Elizabeth Leader received 1s. Elizabeth was a “poor widow whose husband and 2 of her children were killed at Waterford in Ireland by the Rebels and she herself so wounded that a piece of her skull was taken out of her head and lay a long time in the hospital for cure of her wounds” [P69/DUN2/B/011/MS02968/004, f. 100r, St. Dunstan in the West Churchwardens’ Accounts (1645-1651)]. Moreover, on 24 January 1642 Ellen Bourke received 2s in relief, her “husband was burnt in Ireland” [P69/DUN1/B/008/MS07882/001, St. Dunstan in the East Churchwardens’ Account Book (1635-1661), p. 174].

Conclusion

By 1659 Henry Conway had reclaimed his property in Bellaghy, amounting to 508 acres, which he likely retained until his death. On the surface Conway’s life appears to have left very little mark on the history of the Londonderry plantation or indeed the history of seventeenth century Ireland. His inability to pay the debts of his predecessor, Baptist Jones, meant his relationship with the Vintners’ Company waned over the course of the 1620s. The intervention of the Crown in the 1630s allowed Conway to retain his land under a new contract, but the disruption of the 1641 rebellion meant he was unable to fulfil the terms of his lease and improve the town of Bellaghy any further. Conway’s actions during the 1641 Irish rebellion, however, have left one significant legacy. Conway’s agreement with Sir Pheilm O’Neill ensured the survival of the Bellaghy Bawn. While most plantation castles and fortified houses were destroyed during the rebellion, the Bellaghy Bawn was spared and stands today as a monument to the history of the Jacobean plantation scheme and the 1641 rebellion. The Bawn is now a museum and is open to visitors all thanks to the “treachery” of Henry Conway.

Further reading

Hill, An Historical Account of the Plantation in Ulster at the Commencement of the Seventeenth Century 1608-1620 (Belfast, 1877), p. 586.

C. Dickinson and G. Donaldson (eds.), A Source Book of Scottish History (3 vols., Edinburgh, 1961), III, p. 261.

B. Grosart (ed.), The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Edmund Spenser (9 vols., London 1882), IX, p. 247.

The Down Survey of Ireland, accessed 30.03.2020.

Stedall, Men of Substance: The London Livery Companies’ Reluctant Part in the Plantation of Ulster (London, 2016).

Clarke, ‘The Colonisation of Ulster and the rebellion of 1641’, in T. W. Moody and F. X. Martin (eds.), The Course of Irish History (Revised and enlarged edition, Dublin, 2001), pp. 152-164.

Has anyone got stories of tracing their Northern Irish ancestors and where and how they lived that they would like to share? If you’ve used the Great Parchment Book or related sources to find out more about 17th century Northern Irish people and places, we would be delighted to hear from you. While many of us are at home more than usual, and perhaps looking for things to occupy our minds, this seems an ideal opportunity to share our research with others and maybe help them along the way too. You can either comment directly on existing posts or send us an email via the link on the site or to ask.lma@cityoflondon.gov.uk and we can share your stories via the Great Parchment Book blog.

Colin Salter has previously shared his research about his ancestor, Paul Brasier who first brought the Brasier family to Ireland and was involved in the building of a riverside wharf in Coleraine.

And you can read the story of another settler, George Canning, the Ironmongers’ Company’s first agent here.

There must be lots of other stories out there about people and places in the Great Parchment Book – if you have one, please let us know!

And it you want help with tracking down online resources, we’ve got lots of articles and links to help you find your way around on the Great Parchment Book website. For example, have you checked out PRONI’s guides? Or do you know about other records online such as the 1641 Depositions – witness testimonies, mainly by Protestants, but also by some Catholics, from all social backgrounds, concerning their experiences of the 1641 Irish rebellion?

And finally, if you are not already a subscriber, please do consider subscribing to the blog, so you can keep up to date.

Did you know that the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland has published many information leaflets online in its family tree and local history series, several of which might be useful for those researching Irish history and delving into sources such as the Great Parchment Book? The leaflets outline what records are available, what information can be found in the records, and how and where the records can be accessed.

The following are particularly recommended as directly relevant to the Great Parchment Book or introducing complementary sources, but it’s worth taking a look at the full list.

Your family tree leaflet 14: 17th century census substitutes lists a number of sources for tracing individuals between 1610 and 1698 including: Summonister rolls, 1610-84; Muster Rolls 1630; the Civil Survey of Ireland, compiled between 1655 and 1667 for County Londonderry and County Tyrone; Hearth Money Rolls from 1662; Subsidy Rolls listing nobility, clergy and laity from 1666; and Poll Tax Returns from 1660. (See also More 17th century Irish history online from the Great Parchment Book blog).

Your family tree leaflet 12: Militia, Yeomanry Lists and Muster Rolls list the most useful sources for tracing Protestant males between the ages of 16 and 60 liable to service in the militia from 1631 to 1832. (See also More 17th century Irish sources online: muster rolls from the Great Parchment Book blog).

Local history leaflet 1: The Townland outlines the origin of the townland, a small local land unit and sub-division of the parish, which had existed in Ireland since ancient times and was the basis for plantation grants in the 16th and 17th centuries. The leaflet also looks at other land measurements which you will find in the Great Parchment Book such as the ballyboe and bally or baile. (See also Puzzling Place Names from the Great Parchment Book blog).

Your family tree leaflet 24: A simple guide to Ireland is a very useful run through of the things to watch out for when researching Irish history and a must for those new to the subject.

(See also Great Parchment Book retrospective: historical importance and synergy with other sources from the Great Parchment Book blog).

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland holds a wide range of documents about the plantation in Ulster during the period 1600 to 1641. You can now access a digital copy of a new edition of Plantations in Ulster, 1600-41, reproducing 30 documents relating to the Ulster Plantation.

Between 1966 and 1975 PRONI published a series of facsimiles covering various aspects of Irish history from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries intended to introduce school students to archival material and to encourage further research in the archives. The pack covering the plantation period was meticulously edited by R.J. Hunter, a scholar who specialised in the history of Ireland in the early modern period, especially the Plantation of Ulster in the early 17th century. Containing 20 documents, it first appeared in 1975 and was reprinted in 1989, but it was then unavailable for many years.

In 2018 a new edition was published by PRONI and the Ulster Historical Foundation prepared by Ian Montgomery and William Roulston containing an additional ten documents making 30 in all. The documents are mainly sourced from collections in PRONI, but also include printed material and documents from the British Library, the Huntington Library California, Lambeth Palace Library, the National Library of Ireland, The National Archives, Trinity College Dublin and West Yorkshire Archives Service, a memorial inscription and a plaque. 

Each reproduction is accompanied by a description, a commentary and in some cases a transcription of the text. There is also a short accessible introduction to the Ulster Plantation, and a handy list of further publications including online resources such as the Great Parchment Book, the 1641 Depositions and the Down Survey of Ireland.

Highly recommended.

Interesting to read alongside Plantations in Ulster, 1600-41, is “The Significance of Landed Estates in Ulster 1600-1820” by W. H. Crawford in Irish Economic and Social History Vol. 17 (1990), pp. 44-61 (18 pages). Crawford’s article develops themes found in Hunter’s introduction and takes the story into the 19th century. Users of London Metropolitan and Guildhall Library can view the article free of charge online at https://www.jstor.org/stable/24341088, and you may be able to access it either onsite or online through your own library service.

The project to digitally reconstruct the Great Parchment Book became a key part of the 2013 commemorations in Derry/Londonderry of the 400th anniversary of the building of the city walls with the aim that this key document to the history of the Plantation would feature as the central point of an exhibition in Derry’s Guildhall.

The rest is history. The website which hosts the Great Parchment Book went live on 30 May 2013 and the exhibition Plantation: Process, People, Perspectives opened in June 2013 in Derry Guildhall. Both are still going strong.

But we have another commemoration this year and that is the 400th anniversary of the completion of the city walls in March 1619. To celebrate the anniversary a full and vibrant programme of events, entitled Walled City 400 Years, will run until March 2020. The programme is being led by our partners on the Great Parchment Book project, The Honourable The Irish Society and Derry City & Strabane District Council, as well as the builders and owners of the Walls and The Department for Communities’ Historic Environment Division. The celebration aims to provide a great opportunity or both visitors and locals alike to experience the Walled City at its very best and includes historical exhibitions, symposiums, and living archaeology demonstrations and workshops.

The Tower Museum in Derry has curated an exhibition using a treasure trove of objects and archive materials from its collections to tell the story of the Walls, the city and its people. Some of the objects on display have never been seen before, including pottery, ceramics, leather and currency unearthed in archaeological digs in 1970s & 1980s. These objects not only tell us about life and events within, without and around the walls from the last 400 years, but also help us to understand how people would have lived day to day. It is a fascinating story of social history that spans war, rebellion, peace and culture. The exhibition runs until 26 January 2020.

In tandem with this, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), located in the Titanic Quarter in Belfast, is displaying a selection of material from the archaeological archive (from 2 August 2019).

You can find out more about the events here

Thomas Raven’s plan of Londonderry ca. 1622 (copyright Trustees of Lambeth Palace Library)

The Derry city walls are the largest ancient monument in state care in Northern Ireland and have the longest, complete circuit of ramparts of any of the remaining 30 walled towns in Ireland. The Friends of the Derry Walls is a voluntary organisation whose mission is to give a voice to the Walls, raising ambitions for their care and presentation, driving public engagement with the Walls and ensuring that the walls are fully exploited as a resource for educational, cultural and economic development. The Friends have been running a series of activities over the six-year period 2013-2019 of the quadricentennial. If you want to learn more about the walls, they have a website to help you explore this heritage site of national and international significance here

Booking has just opened for Dominus Hibernie/Rex Hiberniae: Pre-modern Irish records 1200-1801, a three day symposium at The National Archives, 21-23 March 2019

The symposium brings together historians of medieval and early modern Ireland to discuss continuity and change across six centuries of Irish history. The event will put into sharper focus the collections with relevance to pre-modern Ireland at The National Archives and consider the archival context and history of this vast collection.

The keynote speakers are Professor Robin Frame (Durham), Professor Patricia Palmer (NUI Maynooth), and Professor David Hayton (Queen’s University Belfast).

Other speakers include Dr Annaleigh Margey from Dundalk Institute of Technology whose talk is entitled “Thinking geographically: cartography and state administration in early modern Ireland”. Dr Margey has written previously for the Great Parchment Book blog on the Livery Company Maps of the Londonderry Plantation.

In this blog we have also looked at the maps of Ireland in the 16th and early 17th centuries held by The National Archives. Of the 68 maps depicting plantations, fortifications and townships in Ireland during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, more than 40 relate to Ulster in the years of the Plantation leading up to the formation of the Irish Society and the period covered by the Great Parchment Book.

Other speakers at the symposium will be looking at more general themes such as governance, administration and record keeping, politics and the economy.

Further details and booking information are here.

The Great Parchment Book blog has been rather quiet over the last few months, but that’s not to say that interest in the content and the project has declined. To the contrary, the Great Parchment Book continues to prove relevant to research in the UK and across the globe. Page views to the Great Parchment Book website have now exceeded 160,000 and downloads of the XML data are also steadily increasing in number.

And it’s also good news for our partners Derry City & Strabane Museum and Visitor Services. Statistics recently received record that to 31 December 2017 nearly one and a half million visits (1,479,598 to be precise) had been made to the to the Plantation, People, Perspectives exhibition in Derry Guildhall. Just to put this in perspective and indicate the impact of the exhibition, this figure is many times the population of Derry itself and more than three quarters of the population of Northern Ireland. The exhibition is still going strong and we look forward to this year’s figures.

So, if you have done research based on the Great Parchment Book, why not share it more widely on this blog? Please contact the editor via ask.lma@cityoflondon.gov.uk for more information.

And finally, here are the updated statistics for the Great Parchment Book by numbers:

• 1 Great Parchment Book of The Honourable The Irish Society
• 165 folios and fragments, stored in 30 bespoke boxes (originally 16)
• 11 Great Twelve livery companies’ holdings recorded (should be 12, but the Merchant Taylors’ portion is missing)
• 1095 personal names indexed on the website including variations in spelling
• 992 place names indexed also including variations
• 49 occupations and titles recorded such as barber-surgeon, fellmonger, muster master and winecowper
• 120 entries in the glossary including occupations and titles, but also terms such as ballibetagh, creete, kill house, rampier, standall and vayle
• Over 160,000 page views of Great Parchment Book website and blog to 9 November 2018
• 148 blog posts published including this one
• 270,000 visitors to Plantation, People, Perspectives exhibition in Derry Guildhall in the first year (opened 30 May 2013) when an original folio of the Great Parchment Book was on display. Nearly one and a half million visitors (1,479,598 to be precise) to the exhibition to 31 December 2017 (many times the population of Derry and over three quarters of the population of Northern Ireland). Still going strong.
• 37 downloads in 7 countries across 3 continents of the Open Access set of 326 XML documents containing encoded transcriptions of the individual folios (2.56MB of data)
• 6 presentations about the project in countries outside the UK across 3 continents, and innumberable links from other websites across the world
• 20 project partners including 14 funders
• 4 awards, 3 shortlisted/finalist, 1 highly commended
• 1 inscription on UK Memory of the World Register (inscribed on 21 June 2016)

All summed up as 1 unique record of the 17th century Plantation of Ulster.

30 May 2018 was the fifth anniversary of the Great Parchment Book website. We were delighted that the website reached 150,000 views around a month before the anniversary, a fitting way to celebrate its success. Views are now fast approaching 152,000, testament to the ongoing relevance of the Great Parchment Book as a resource and the significance of the project.

To mark the anniversary, we’re again taking a look at the project through numbers, from the names in the surviving folios of the book itself to the visitors to the website with some interesting facts along the way.

• 1 Great Parchment Book of The Honourable The Irish Society
• 165 folios and fragments, stored in 30 bespoke boxes (originally 16)
• 11 Great Twelve livery companies’ holdings recorded (should be 12, but the Merchant Taylors’ portion is missing)
• 1095 personal names indexed on the website including variations in spelling
• 992 place names indexed also including variations
• 49 occupations and titles recorded such as barber-surgeon, fellmonger, muster master and winecowper
• 120 entries in the glossary including occupations and titles, but also terms such as ballibetagh, creete, kill house, rampier, standall and vayle
• Over 150,000 page views of Great Parchment Book website and blog to 30 May 2018
• 147 blog posts published including this one
• 270,000 visitors to Plantation, People, Perspectives exhibition in Derry Guildhall in the first year (opened 30 May 2013) when an original folio of the Great Parchment Book was on display. Almost 960,000 visitors to the exhibition to 30 May 2016 (several times the population of Derry and nearly half the population of Northern Ireland). Still going strong.
• 33 downloads in 6 countries across 3 continents of the Open Access set of 326 XML documents containing encoded transcriptions of the individual folios (2.56MB of data)
• 6 presentations about the project in countries outside the UK across 3 continents, and innumberable links from other websites across the world
• 20 project partners including 14 funders
• 4 awards, 3 shortlisted/finalist, 1 highly commended
• 1 inscription on UK Memory of the World Register (inscribed on 21 June 2016)

All summed up as 1 unique record of the 17th century Plantation of Ulster.

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We are always keen to share information about other sources relating to the history of the Ulster Plantation which complement the Great Parchment Book, especially those which are available online.

The UK National Archives holds a series of maps of Ireland in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Of the 68 maps depicting plantations, fortifications and townships in Ireland during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, more than 40 relate to Ulster in the years of the Plantation leading up to the formation of the Irish Society and the period covered by the Great Parchment Book.

Discovery, TNA’s online catalogue, contains detailed descriptions of each map and a high resolution image is downloadable for a fee directly from the catalogue entry (example, MPF 1/46  County Londonderry. Map of ‘parte of ye Baronie of Loghinisholin’ 1609). The original maps may be viewed for free at TNA in Kew.

For more information about the maps, including contextual information and details of other publications that explain their meaning and importance, please read TNA’s research guide Irish maps c1558-c1610.

The maps come from state papers Ireland, the main record of government business in Ireland in the early modern period. They have been extracted from series SP 64, and are now held in MPF 1/35-102. Papers associated with the maps may be found amongst the State papers Ireland 1509-1782.

The maps have also been published online by Findmypast, a subscription based family history website, as Ireland, Maps and Surveys 1558-1610. The maps are searchable, but only by place, year and archive reference. This online resource has been covered at length in the Irish Examiner which reports that New collection quite literally maps the colonisation of Ireland 500 years ago.

If you are especially interested in maps, you can read about livery company maps of the Londonderry Plantation in Dr Annaleigh Margey’s blog post here. For the period after the Great Parchment Book, you can find out more about Down’s Survey of Ireland, 1656-8 here. And search the Great Parchment Book blog for information about even more original sources, many of which are now accessible online, under History.

International interest in the Great Parchment Book continues unabated and here we share two recent connections with projects and programmes in France and Finland.

Les rescapés du feu

Colleagues in France were very interested to find out more about the digital reconstruction of the Great Parchment Book and invited the project to present at a study day in Chartres on 17 November 2017 entitled Les rescapés du feu: L’imagerie scientifique au service des manuscrits de Chartres (Fire survivors: Contribution of imaging techniques to the study of Chartres manuscripts).

The parchment collection at the heart of the study day has many parallels to the Great Parchment Book, being a form of doomsday book of the region of Chartres, and having fallen victim to a fire. The Municipal Library at Chartres was one of the great European libraries and home to a prestigious manuscript collection dating from the 11th century. On 26 May 1944 the library was bombed and fire destroyed many of the manuscripts. However, 220 of the 518 medieval manuscripts survived; some are almost intact, others as charred blocks or shrivelled fragments. Extremely fragile and often difficult to identify, the manuscripts remained inaccessible to researchers for more than seventy years.

The project REMAC – A la REcherche des MAnuscrits de Chartres – got underway this year. Like the Great Parchment Book project, the collaborative research has brought together a range of experts to work on the use of different imaging techniques to retrieve the written content in the damaged manuscripts. In parallel, research is being undertaken to set up new imaging and microscopy techniques to assess the degradation of parchment.

The study day aimed to present the research project from the perspective of historians, imaging scientists and conservators. It also included presentations from other research teams in Europe concerned with improving the accessibility and conservation of damaged manuscripts which is where the Great Parchment Book came in.

Tim Weyrich, Professor of Visual Computing and Deputy Director of the Centre for Digital Humanities (UCLDH) from project partner UCL, delivered a well-received presentation (in French!) on the Great Parchment Book at the study day. We hope that this will be available online in due course along with all the other presentations (watch this space).

Finland’s DIGIHUM programme

Tim has also been making connections with Finnish digital humanities researchers. On 4 October 2017 UCLDH were delighted to meet with delegates from the Academy of Finland’s multidisciplinary DIGIHUM programme, with the aim of sharing the latest British and Finnish research in digital humanities, and strengthening collaborations between the two. UCLDH presented on three projects including the Great Parchment Book.

LMA and UCL are pleased to announce that an open access set of 326 XML documents containing encoded transcriptions of the individual folios of the Great Parchment Book is now available via UCL Discovery.

Patricia Stewart transcribing a folio

The dataset has been made available as a source for the historical and social geographical scholarly community, to allow others to use the dataset for their own research. The files include transcription of the folios and XML coding using the Great Parchment Book schema created under the Textual Encoding Initiative (TEI) on oXygen XML Editor Professional software version 14; the data set is 2.56MB in total.

The data is provided with a Creative Commons Attribution-non Commercial (CC BY NC 3.0) licence. LMA and UCL would be delighted to be kept informed of how and in what context this data is being used, so do please get in touch. More information about using the data and contact details are available via UCL Discovery (use link above).

The final piece of the jigsaw is now in place. The XML dataset joins the transcriptions and digitally enhanced images available here on the Great Parchment Book website, and the free software and main academic outputs, including the complete overview of the project published in Oxford University Press’s Digital Scholarship in the Humanities journal. Together these provide full and publicly accessible documentation of this significant 17th century source for the history of the Plantation recognised by UNESCO, and of the project (conservation, transcription and digital reconstruction)which not only made it accessible to researchers for the first time in 200 years, but has provided a digital reconstruction solution for similarly fire-damaged historic parchment.

London Metropolitan Archives receives regular requests from individuals and groups which want to visit to discover more about the Great Parchment Book project. These include archivists, conservators and other heritage professionals, and academics and students, especially those interested in digital humanities, from across the world.

A visitor from Down Under

In April, LMA welcomed Kit Kugatoff, Director, Collections and Access at Queensland State Archives who was keen to visit to discuss our approaches to digitisation and technology assisted conservation with particular reference to the Great Parchment Book project. During her visit Philippa Smith, Head of Collections and Caroline De Stefani, Conservation Studio Manager were delighted to show Kit some original folios of the Great Parchment Book and discuss other ways in which we see technology assisting conservators to make accessible to researchers the information locked in damaged documents. Laurence Ward, Head of Digital Services also talked to Kit about LMA’s digitisation programmes and showed her the Digital Services Suite. As always we found that we shared lots of experiences and issues and it was beneficial to exchange knowledge and ideas with a professional colleague from the other side of the world.

Exploring technology and heritage in London

In June LMA was pleased to host a group of students from Michigan State University in the United States based in London for a month for their “Technology, Humanities, and the Arts in London” programme. The course focussed on how archives, libraries and museums see the relationship between their physical (and digital) materials and the digital interfaces of those materials. The students especially wanted to find out more first hand about the Great Parchment Book project, but also to look at LMA’s regular digitisation processes as well as new developments.

Once again Philippa Smith and Caroline De Stefani talked about the Great Parchment Book project and the students were thrilled to see original folios of the book in a display in the Conservation Studio. Philippa and Caroline also showed the students examples of other documents where technology might not only improve accessibility, but also reveal hidden information about how the items were created and even more about former conservation treatments. LMA is currently working with UCL under the auspices of SEAHA on a project to explore the possibilities presented by multispectral imaging of documentary material. We were delighted to share with the students some of the documents we had been looking at with the doctoral student only a few days before which may provide the raw material for her research. Laurence Ward then showed the students some of the ways in which digitisation is transforming how we work at LMA and took them down to the Digital Services Suite to learn more about our digitisation processes.

This is becoming a regular annual visit and we look forward to welcoming another group of students next year.

Taking a closer look back home

Also in June Caroline met with Gwen Spicer, an art conservator from the United States who was interested very specifically in the technique of using magnets to flatten parchment which we had used in the Great Parchment Book project. Gwen was also intrigued by one of the materials we had used in the project when humidifying parchment – Bondina. She hadn’t come across it in the US and took samples back home so she could take a closer look. Gwen wrote about her visit for her own blog and you read about it here.

It is pleasing to be able to report that on the 4th anniversary of the launch of the Great Parchment Book website yesterday, the number of views of the site passed 130,000.

The website was launched on 30 May 2013 immediately prior to the opening of the  exhibition “Plantation: Process, people, perspectives” in Derry Guildhall  in June 2013 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the building of the city walls in the year that Derry-Londonderry celebrated being the UK’s first City of Culture. The digitally reconstructed manuscript, accessible for the first time in over 200 years via the dedicated website, took pride of place in the exhibition which has proved to be a great success and still running today.

Here’s looking forward to at least 150,000 views before 30 May 2018 when we will be 5 years old!

We also celebrated the anniversary with a curator’s talk on the Great Parchment Book in the Heritage Gallery at Guildhall, where three folios of the book are on display, on the first ever London History Day today (31 May). This event was also part of  a programme celebrating the 950th anniversary of the City of London Corporation’s extensive archives in 2017. The members of the small, but attentive audience had obviously done their research before hand and had lots of interesting questions. Several were going on to other London History Day events in the City of London and beyond, including at London Metropolitan Archives. It is great to be able to showcase some of the archival treasures held by the City of London as part of this new venture.

On Wednesday 31 May 2017 Historic England launches the first ever London History Day, celebrating the capital’s extraordinary history and heritage. London Metropolitan Archives will mark the day as part of a series of celebratory events this year in connection with the 950th anniversary of the City of London Corporation’s extensive archives.

As part of London History Day, there will be a curator’s talk on the Great Parchment Book in the Heritage Gallery at Guildhall Art Gallery. The talk is at 10.30am on 31 May in the Heritage Gallery and is free, but please book on Eventbrite to secure your place.

The Great Parchment Book is the centrepiece of the current display in the City of London’s Heritage Gallery at Guildhall Art Gallery until 10 August 2017. For details of the display and how to find Guildhall Art Gallery, please visit the Heritage Gallery webpage.

The Great Parchment Book has also been City of London Treasure of the Month for May 2017.

For details of what’s happening at London Metropolitan Archives on London History Day see Eventbrite.

There are also lots of other London History day events in the City of London including talks, walks and displays, many around Guildhall.

Two original folios of the Great Parchment Book were on display at a reception at Girdlers’ Hall on Monday 8 May 2017 held by the Honourable The Irish Society for the City of London livery companies and the City of London. The reception provided an opportunity for attendees to learn more about the Honourable The Irish Society’s charitable grants programme and mission to strengthen the special relationship between the City of London and Northern Ireland that has existed for over 400 years. Guests were invited to reconnect to a shared history, and engage with the continuing social and economic development of the Province.

A piper from the 1st Battalion the Irish Guards provided a musical accompaniment to the start of the evening, before guests were welcomed by The Reverend Sir George Newton, Bt, Master of the Worshipful Company of Girdlers. Quietly passionate speeches from Alderman Sir David Wootton, Governor of the Irish Society and Deputy Henry Pollard, Deputy Governor followed, with Mr William Charnley, master of the Worshipful Company of Drapers talking about his own company’s contribution to charitable causes in Northern Ireland through the Irish Society. The Girdlers’ Company Beadle, Robert Young, was master of ceremonies and cheerfully, but firmly kept us all in order.

There was much interest in the folios of the Great Parchment Book on display. The City of London, eight of the Great Twelve of the City of London livery companies and the Irish Society had all contributed to the project to conserve and digitally reconstruct the book, and it was a pleasure to talk about this important source for the history of Northern Ireland, and the project to make it accessible again after 200 years, to members of the livery companies which are represented in the book.

The two folios displayed were of Fishmongers’ Company lands (folios F7v and F8r) chosen as much for their physical appearance (distortion, shrunken text, evidence of singeing) as much as content. A modern transcription of the pages taken from the Great Parchment Book website was supplied. The folios were carefully presented under a bespoke Perspex dome sitting on the Tyvek sheets which usually support them in their bespoke packaging. This gave guests the rare opportunity to view the original folios at close quarters, at the same time keeping them safe. Philippa Smith from London Metropolitan Archives was on hand throughout the evening to keep a close eye on the folios as well as to answer questions.

Thanks go to Robert Young, Beadle of the Girdlers’ Company and his staff for looking after the folios in secure storage before the after the event, and to the support of the Irish Society, especially Edward Montgomery, Secretary, who had suggested London Metropolitan Archives should bring the folios along to the event.

The Great Parchment Book is the centrepiece of the current display in the City of London’s Heritage Gallery at Guildhall Art Gallery until 10 August 2017. Visitors have a rare opportunity to see three original folios from the Great Parchment Book at close quarters, showing in a striking display the extraordinary 3D nature of the surviving distorted pages of the manuscript affectionately known as the “poppadum book”.

More about the pages on display in the Heritage Gallery

The pages on display ( CLA/049/EM/02/018/Q6, Q11, Q12) relate to the Natives’ Lands, the estates granted to those who were Irish by birth. Landholders mentioned include Ferdora, Shane and Brian O’Cahan, gentlemen. The O’Cahan clan had been the chief sub clan to the O’Neills, Kings of Ulster. The majority of the clan chiefs had fled in the 1607 Flight of the Earls after the defeat of Hugh O’Neill. It was “O’Cahan’s Country” which had been confiscated by the Crown and then assigned to the City of London for plantation. Thirteen freeholds were allocated to the native Irish across the new county of Londonderry. The lands mentioned in the displayed pages lie within the Ironmongers’ and Grocers’ Companies’ proportions. They record that Ferdora O’Cahan is instructed to erect a substantial house “after the fashion and manner of an English house” on his estate. It is also notable that settler Robert Downs is required “to keep in readiness upon the premises for the service of his Majesty … one musket” whereas none of the O’Cahan’s are instructed to do so as the intention was to muster forces to counter the threat from the native Irish.

For details of the display and how to find Guildhall Art Gallery, please visit the Heritage Gallery web page.

Treasure of the Month

The Great Parchment Book has been designated City of London Treasure of the Month for May 2017.

Curator’s talk at the Heritage Gallery

On Wednesday 31 May 2017 Historic England launches the first ever London History Day, celebrating the capital’s extraordinary history and heritage. London Metropolitan Archives will mark the day as part of a series of celebratory events this year in connection with the 950th anniversary of the City of London Corporation’s extensive archives.

As part of London History Day, there will be a curator’s talk on the Great Parchment Book in the Heritage Gallery at Guildhall Art Gallery. The talk is at 10.30am on 31 May in the Heritage Gallery and is free, but please book on Eventbrite to secure your place.

For more details of what’s happening at LMA on London History Day, also see Eventbrite.

There are lots of stories just waiting to be discovered in the reconstructed pages of the Great Parchment Book. Colin Salter has found information about his ancestor, Paul Brasier who first brought the Brasier family to Ireland and was involved in the building of a riverside wharf in Coleraine.

Paul Brasier arrived in Ulster in 1611 as part of part of the Plantation of James I and settled in Coleraine. His name occurs several times in the Great Parchment Book, principally as a member of a consortium commissioned by the Crown to build a riverside wharf in Coleraine. The book records in some detail the terms and conditions of the commission. The wharf must be a minimum size “from the full sea or high water mark down into the said river sixty foot at least and twenty foot at least in breadth, and the said quay or wharf shall be walled on the outsides next the water with good, sufficient, and strong timber” and the consortium must not use cheap materials; they “shall laid forth and expend in and about the building and making of the said wharf forty pounds sterling at the least.”

In return for building this commercial asset to the town, the consortium could run and develop the quayside facilities “at their proper costs and their dues, to make, erect, build, and fully finish one crane and cranehouse on any such part of the aforesaid wharf as shall be most convenient” and thereby, it was to be hoped, make their money back; they “shall have and hold all profits, commodities, duties, and payments belonging to the said quay, wharf, and crane for the term of one and twenty years from the feast of Phillip and Jacob now last past, for and under the yearly rent of forty shillings sterling for the last twenty years of the said one and twenty years payable unto his Majesty, his heirs and successors.”

So the King took his cut, but Paul Brasier and his partners were hoping to profit by doing business with the new regime. It is certainly true that, at the same time that disillusioned settlers were leaving the plantation, the Brasier family’s land holdings began to increase. In 1649, he received a further grant of land in Ulster, presumably not from Charles I who had been beheaded in January that year, but from Charles’ executioner Oliver Cromwell. It is tempting to speculate that Paul was being rewarded in the aftermath of the massacres of Protestant settlers in the Irish uprising of 1641 – an uprising which another ancestor, Hugh Massy, helped to suppress – but that’s another story.

Find out more about Paul Brasier and Hugh Massy by following the links at http://talltalesfromthetrees.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/paul-brasier-active-1611-1649-and.html.

You can read the story of another settler, George Canning, the Ironmongers’ Company’s first agent at http://www.greatparchmentbook.org/2016/10/03/the-ironmongers-companys-initial-period-in-ireland/.

There must be lots of other stories out there about people in the Great Parchment Book – if you know one, please let us know!

The shrivelled and distorted folios of the Great Parchment Book have earned it the nickname the “poppadom book”. Imagine then the state of a parchment book which has been likened to lasagne or alphabet soup! This was the case with the Faddan More Psalter, also known as the Irish Bog Psalter, discovered when it was dug up by a mechanical digger in a bog at Faddan More, near Birr in County Tipperary, Ireland in 2006.

The manuscript, an early medieval Christian psalter or text of the book of Psalms, was probably written in about 800 in one of a number of monasteries in the area. Following its discovery, it was retrieved by the Museum of Ireland and a complex conservation project ensued, with systematic recording and dismantling in order to extract as much information as possible about it as treatment proceeded. The project was overseen the National Museum of Ireland and Trinity College Library, with specialists in different aspects of the work sought for consultation as material related to their fields became available.

The approach to treatment was very similar to that undertaken with the Great Parchment book with a thorough condition assessment followed by the testing of conservation techniques such as those used to dry out the folios in the case of the waterlogged Faddan More Psalter, and humidification and then drying with the Great Parchment Book.

After several years of conservation work, the psalter went on display at the National Museum of Ireland in 2011.

You can read more about the project on the Museum of Ireland’s web pages about the Faddan More Psalter.

If you want to make a start looking into the history of the Plantation of Ulster, then the BBC has a very good resource available within its online archive. Developed by BBC History under the overarching theme of Wars and Conflict, it’s an excellent introduction to the topic both for the general reader and those who’d like to dig a bit deeper. Through essays, audio, photographs and interactive maps, you can discover how the Plantation transformed Ulster.

There are two main sections. That on Ireland before the Plantation looks at the legal and religious systems that regulated political and social life in Gaelic Ireland and the indispensable role played by the bardic poets who charted its rise and fall. The section on English and Scottish planters touches on early Scottish migration to Ireland from the 14th century, before looking more closely at the history of Plantation from Elizabeth I’s first colony in 1571 until the 1641 Catholic Rebellion, and then examining the long term consequences of Plantation. Topics covered include the City of London livery companies, the economic background of the settlers and the social and economic conditions in Ulster, and women and the Plantation.

The resource also has supplementary pages on a variety of subjects including cartography, the connection to English settlement in America, Plantation architecture and the linguistic history of Ulster. The audio clips are extensive and there are maps, animations and other aids to help you dig deeper into the history of the Plantation.  Of particular note are the animations of Thomas Raven’s maps of 1622. These maps form part of the evidence submitted to King Charles I in support of the charge against the City of London and the livery companies that they were not fulfilling their legal obligations to implement the Plantation. This charge led to the compilation of the Great Parchment Book which documents their Irish estates.

There are two major caveats about the pages. Archived web pages are not updated so new research, discoveries and interpretations will not feature and they become increasingly out of date. Most significantly from the point of view of this blog, an essential original documentary source for the Londonderry Plantation is not referenced. Of course, that source is the Great Parchment Book which was unavailable to researchers at the time the pages were put together (around 2000) owing to its damaged condition.

Nevertheless, these BBC History archived pages on the Plantation are well worth exploring alongside the virtually reconstructed Great Parchment Book. Visitors to Northern Ireland can also find out more from the continuing exhibition at Derry Guildhall, People, Plantation, Perspectives which opened in May 2013 in connection with the 400th anniversary of the building of the City walls, the driver for the Great Parchment Book project to make available the manuscript which lies at the heart of the story.

We were fortunate that the launch of the major academic paper on the Great Parchment Book project coincided with London Metropolitan Archives’ Charlie Turpie presenting the project at the Symposium on Evaluating Digital Cultural Resources (EDCR2016) in Glasgow on 13 December 2016.

Charlie commented afterwards that one of the themes that emerged from the symposium was that physical and digital often go hand in hand and continue to have a relationship – this came out in various papers. The Great Parchment Book presentation captured that perfectly – seeing the transformation from shrivelled parchment to digital image was a real wow for the audience. The audience also got the pathos of the membranes being preserved for 200 years just in case they could be made accessible one day.

One attendee was very pleased that the Great Parchment Book website features both the before and after shots of the folios as other projects only show the digitally enhanced images which is not as useful as having both.

That the presentation was very well received is reflected in the contemporaneous comments on Twitter of which a selection is given below:

• Fantastic #GreatParchmentBook project presented by @CharlieTurpie @LdnMetArchives #EDCR2016 Loved the poppadoms analogy!
• Gasp from audience as @CharlieTurpie shows an image of the #greatparchmentbook fragments in a box. Yikes! #edcr2016
• ‘a mass of scorched and dirty fragments’ – tricky task to create a digitised version of the #greatparchmentbook #EDCR2016
• Project allows users to navigate and flatten digital images to digitally uncover the text within. Cool! #greatparchmentbook #edcr2016
• Digital reconstruction to enable access is fab; book & its contents are also significant for local community #edcr2016 #greatparchmentbook
• Definitive article on fascinating #greatparchmentbook released today! Can’t wait to read more on it after #EDCR2016
• #greatparchmentbook is such an awesome project!

You can catch up with the Great Parchment Book project on Twitter by using the hashtag #greatparchmentbook.

The paper, published in Oxford University Press’s Digital Scholarship in the Humanities journal, is freely available online. At the time of writing it is doing very well online and is already in the top 5% of papers in Altmetric (which tracks online research outputs), and 99th centile for attention; it is the number one output from digital scholarship in the humanities.

Great Parchment Book in Finland

The Great Parchment Book’s world tour continued with Tim Weyrich, Professor of Visual Computing, Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics Group, Department of Computer Science, University College London, lead of the project digital acquisition and reconstruction, giving the keynote at SyysGraph 2016, the Finnish computer graphics scene’s leading annual event, the previous evening. His talk on Problem-Aware Digitization of Cultural Heritage Artifacts featured the Great Parchment Book as one of the case studies and he was able to promote the paper which was published the following day.

Our partners at UCL have announced the publication of a major paper describing the process of conserving, imaging, virtually flattening, and finally reading the Great Parchment Book of the Honourable The Irish Society, held in London Metropolitan Archives. As followers of this blog will know the project saw archivists, conservators, imaging scientists, historians, computer scientists, and digital humanities experts working together in an interdisciplinary, international partnership. We developed a low-cost process for conserving, digitizing, 3D-reconstructing, and virtually flattening the fire-damaged, buckled parchment, enabling new readings and understanding of the text to be created.

The paper, published in Oxford University Press’s Digital Scholarship in the Humanities journal, presents a complete overview of the project, detailing the conservation, digital acquisition, and digital reconstruction methods used. It is freely available in open access, meaning anyone can read the details of the project, and see our images and videos to understand the scope and scale of the project, and its contribution to the restoration of the Great Parchment Book. It is freely available online.

Note: Please use the hashtag #greatparchmentbook when referring to the project on social media.

Significance of the project for some of the key partners

Professor Tim Weyrich, Professor of Visual Computing, Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics Group, Department of Computer Science, University College London, lead of the digital acquisition and reconstruction said: “I feel privileged having been able to conduct computer science and imaging research in the context of a project of such cultural importance. We were fortunate enough that the engagement with the humanities’ unique problem domain allowed us to go beyond mere application of known techniques, pushing the boundary in our own research field while making a tangible difference to the wider public.”

Edward Montgomery, Secretary of The Honourable The Irish Society, said: “We are delighted that The Honourable The Irish Society has been part of a major collaborative project to bring The Great Parchment Book, one of its most historic documents, ‘back to life’. The Book is a marvellous testament to history and provides a detailed account from 1639 of the City of London’s role in the Plantation of Ulster and its administration. It is a valuable tool for anyone interested in their ancestral history within Ulster and an excellent teaching aid for those exploring early modern Ireland.”

Geoff Pick, Director of London Metropolitan Archives said: “The City of London Corporation, through London Metropolitan Archives, has been delighted to be a major partner in the Great Parchment Book project, one of the most innovative in the archive sector in recent years.  It places great value on the Book, not least in helping the City’s support for the 400th anniversary of the building of Derry’s city walls in 2013 and the state visit to London of the President of Ireland in 2014.   The Book has also been recognised by UNESCO as being of outstanding national importance this year when it was inscribed on the UK Memory of the World Register, the first on the Register concerning Northern Ireland.”

Professor Melissa Terras, Director of UCL Centre for Digital Humanities said: “It has been a pleasure to work on this project, which has brought together expertise from so many different angles, allowing us to finally provide advanced access to this important, but very damaged, document. The conservation, imaging, and reconstruction have all contributed to the creation of a digital resource of lasting value for researchers, students, and the wider public. Our work encourages further understanding of the role of the City of London in the plantation, and the importance of the Great Parchment Book to its local, national, and international contexts. It also shows us the benefits of undertaking advanced digital projects in the area of cultural heritage.”

Full citation details

Pal, K., Avery, N., Boston, P., Campagnolo, A., De Stefani, C., Matheson-Pollock, H., Panozzo, D., Payne, M., Schüller, C., Sanderson, C., Scott, C., Smith, P., Smither, R., Sorkine-Hornung, O., Stewart, A., Stewart, E., Stewart, P., Terras, M., Walsh, B., Ward, L., Yamada, L., Weyrich, T. (2016). “Digitally reconstructing the Great Parchment Book: 3D recovery of fire-damaged historical documents” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Oxford University Press.

The Civil Survey 1654–6 of landholding in Ireland was carried out by an inquisition which visited each barony and took depositions from landholders based on parish and townland, with written descriptions of their boundaries. The Survey covered 27 of Ireland’s 32 counties, but excluded the five counties in Connacht which had been the subject of the Strafford survey commissioned by Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford in the 1630s. The original Civil Survey records were destroyed by fire in 1711, but a set of copies for ten counties was discovered in the 19th century.

The Survey was published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission in the early 20th century and digital copies are now available. Of most interest in connection with the Great Parchment Book and the Ulster Plantation is the Survey for Donegal, Londonderry and Tyrone originally published in 1937. The digital copy of the published copy is available here.

The Civil Survey was separate from the Down Survey, a cartographic survey, which began while the Civil Survey was in progress, and made use of Civil Survey data to guide its progress. The Down Survey is also available online. Find out more about the Down Survey of Ireland in a previous blog post on 17th century Irish history online.

The Great Parchment Book project was referenced in a paper on the Scientific Use of Archives given at the International Institute of Archival Science of Trieste and Maribor conference on 25 October 2016.

Over 150 delegates from 25 different countries heard Tim Harris talk about the variety of sources available for scientific research at London Metropolitan Archives, the way LMA uses science in the preservation of archives, and the success of the STEM education stream working with London schools to promote discovery in science, technology, engineering and mathematics through historical sources.

The article accompanying the paper has been published in Atlanti vol 26 (2016) Number 2  ISSN 1318-0134.

A new book on the livery companies role in the Plantation of Ulster by Robert Stedall, a Past Master of the Ironmongers’ Company, has recently been published.

It was James I, who, in 1610, forced the London Livery Companies into colonising County Londonderry, then the most belligerent part of Ireland, and into fortifying Londonderry and Coleraine. He was looking for ‘Men of Substance’ to restore order among Ulster’s Irish chieftains, who were receiving Continental European support. Facing continuing attack from militant Ulster rebels, settlers did not arrive in sufficient numbers to establish control. Far from replacing the local Irish they needed their help to build their settlements. Charles I, frustrated at their failure to meet plantation objectives, expropriated their estates. This led to the City of London supporting Parliament in the Civil war, which cost Charles I his head. Meanwhile, in 1641, the Irish organised a concerted rebellion to destroy any remaining British settlements. It was only the walls of Londonderry, built by the City livery companies, which prevented them from re-establishing complete control.

In his book MEN OF SUBSTANCE: The London Livery Companies’ Reluctant Part in the Plantation of Ulster, Robert Stedall  explores the livery companies role in the Plantation from its beginnings in 1610 through to the 19th century when the Companies, realising their tenants’ plight, resumed control of their estates and commenced a period of rebuilding, development and community support. By 1900 though, most of the Companies had sold up, owing to the British Government’s policy of financing tenant purchases.

MEN OF SUBSTANCE: The London Livery Companies’ Reluctant Part in the Plantation of Ulster is published by Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.

Robert Stedall, a Past Master of the Ironmongers’ Company, explores the Company’s initial period in Ulster and the work of its first agent, George Canning.

When efforts to establish the plantation in Londonderry were begun, the Ironmongers’ Company claimed that it did not have the means to participate. It was the least wealthy of the twelve Great Companies. Although the King was insistent, about half the members remained conveniently away from town. Pressure to assess members was applied, but the Company had to augment their contributions by borrowing. Although the first levy was paid, the second proved more difficult, and the third had to be met out of the its common stock. Yet, in February 1611, it confirmed that, with support from its associated Minor Companies, it would accept land in Ulster. Contributions were as follows:

On 17 December 1613, the Ironmongers drew an area of 19,450 acres, on the Bann river upstream from Coleraine. Being in several parcels, separated by church and native freeholds, it was indefensible. With its fragmented lay out, consideration was given to dividing it among each of the associated Companies, but this was dismissed in view of the difficulty in providing security. With the Ironmongers left in sole charge, it was named the Manor of Lizard. It was uncharted territory, and Simon Kingsland was commissioned to provide a map, which he completed quickly, but inaccurately.

The Company’s particularly good early records are supported by the letters of George Canning, the first Agent. The Company was lucky in its choice. His brother William was to become Master in 1617. They were great-great-grandsons of Sir Thomas Canninge, Lord Mayor in 1456. As the sixth son, George needed to establish himself and applied for the role at a salary of £100 per annum. He was ‘a country gentleman of the type most needed to make the Plantation a success’. As most agents only sought a quick profit, he was a rarity. On arrival in 1614, he received precise instructions with regard to ‘fencing of lands, establishing boundaries, letting land, collecting rents, and keeping accounts’. Having arrived with several bricklayers and carpenters, he had soon repaired some Irish cabins to provide shelter.

Canning chose to build his settlement at Agivey on the Aghadowey River, up which barges could deliver materials from the Bann. The land was excellent and local clay was used to make bricks, but good stone was in short supply. He balanced quality with economy, turning to Coleraine, for lime, timber, slate, limestone and lath, but poor winter weather prevented delivery. Although nails could be delivered for £1 from London to Coleraine, it cost a further ten shillings to bring them up river past rapids on the Bann and by horse and cart to the settlement. His carpenters were soon making timber frames and he completed a brick kiln. He preferred ‘half-timber’ for house building, despite transportation difficulties, but each one needed 26 tons of sawn wood. Chimney stacks were of brick and casement windows were hung on iron hinges.

Canning was soon able to offer leases to workmen, who would undertake to expel the Irish, and, during 1615, he granted fifteen leases to settlers, conditional on them building two English-style houses and assisting in church repairs. Boundaries were to be hedged and Irish nomadic-style farming was prohibited. By December 1615, leases for twenty houses were granted to English and Scots. For security he wanted settlements of at least six houses, but, although his plan had been to evict the Irish, they offered higher rentals than the settlers and were retained on short leases. Without them there would have been economic collapse. He was always cavalier. In 1616, one hundred and nineteen out of one hundred and twenty-seven under-tenants remained Irish. Yet high rentals left them ever more impoverished and seething with anger.

The buildings of the Ironmongers by Thomas Raven 1622 reproduced courtesy of the Drapers’ Company

Canning urgently requested a delivery of arms from London to combat rebels, who continued to strip clothing from the workers and stealing their tools. The castle and bawn was of critical importance. With timber being unsuitable for the walls, he used stone on the lower levels with brick above. He waited for good bricklayers, but was a respected employer, who paid promptly. The foundations needed piling on the boggy soil. Yet, by the end of 1616, he had completed a structure with walls four feet thick and thirty-one feet high, and a circular flanker at each corner. There were no interior fittings not even stairs. He claimed it as the best house built on any of the plantations, although others had been costlier. In 1619, the Government surveyor was impressed, but was concerned that the bawn had only three sides (with the river side still unbuilt) and no flankers.

Despite his problems, Canning pronounced Agivey with its six houses as ‘a great town in this country’. With thirteen further houses built by tenants elsewhere, he considered it ‘a good plantation’. He was soon generating a surplus. In 1617, with his standing well-established, he became head lessor, negotiating for himself a lucrative 41-year tenancy. This included the castle, five houses and nine townlands. He built bridges, erected a mill and repaired the church. At last, his wife and family joined him from England. Yet finding settlers was proving difficult; they would not pay what he was asking or build to the designated standard.  Meanwhile the Irish continued to offer higher rents than settlers could afford.

Nothing remains of Canning’s settlement; it was destroyed in the Great Rebellion of 1641, when the settlers were butchered. In 1635, they had been left in the lurch when the Companies’ interests were expropriated by the Crown. Although Canning escaped to Londonderry, his eldest son, Paul failed in an attempt to hold Agivey against the rebels. Canning’s second son William was killed with many others in a doomed attempt to defend Garvagh, a native castle further north. When the Cromwellians restored British control in 1649, Paul establish his own settlement there. Garvagh now became the Canning family estate, from which their later title takes its name. Although Agivey was returned to the Ironmongers, it was never rebuilt.

Robert Stedall is the author of MEN OF SUBSTANCE: The London Livery Companies’ Reluctant Part in the Plantation of Ulster recently published by Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

The importance of the livery company maps of the Londonderry Plantation cannot be underestimated. Dr Annaleigh Margey, Lecturer in History at Dundalk Institute of Technology, has been examining the maps of Ireland and its regions during the decades of plantation from 1550 to 1636 and takes a closer look at eight of these maps from the livery companies archives held by London Metropolitan Archives at Guildhall Library. While to modern viewers, they appear as basic drawings with little by way of modern cartographic expectation, the maps became fundamental tools in the development and shaping of plantation landscapes in Londonderry.

Background

In 2013, the City of Derry/Londonderry in Northern Ireland commemorated the 400th anniversary of its foundation and charter, granted under the auspices of plantation in Ulster.  On its foundation, the city was envisaged as a fortified settlement that would bolster the security of a wider plantation in its hinterland. This plantation, known as the Londonderry Plantation, gave rise to the establishment of a new County Londonderry, formed from the former County Coleraine and part of north Tyrone. Two towns – Londonderry and Coleraine – were also founded. The newly formed the Honourable the Irish Society became overseers of the plantation, while the Twelve Great Livery Companies of the City of London each received twelve lots of the land of the new county to be managed, developed and financed from their company halls in London. Under the terms of their grants, the companies agreed to bring British settlers to, and remove native Irish from, their lands; to establish settlements; to pay rents; and to ensure the taking of the Oath of Supremacy by their settlers; among other regulations.

Locating surviving maps

In 1613, however, the individual livery companies knew little about the lands of Londonderry. Having been grudgingly enticed into the plantation, the companies became anxious to know more about the physical and cultural landscapes of their new lands. As a result, some individual companies began commissioning surveys and maps of their estates in the first decade of the plantation. Since 2001, I have been examining the maps that were made of Ireland and its regions during the decades of plantation from 1550 to 1636. This research has taken me to both public and private archives across Britain and Ireland, finding maps in places ranging from national collections, to stately homes, to an ensuite bathroom! As a result, I have now located 655 manuscript maps for the period.

The maps held by London Metropolitan Archives at Guildhall Library

Plate 1: Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors’ plan of ‘Macosquin’, possibly by Thomas Raven, c.1616 (LMA CLC/L/MD/F/016D/MS34100/134).

Of these, an estimated 105 relate to the Londonderry Plantation. These are located in the library of Trinity College Dublin, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast, and Drapers’ Hall, Goldsmiths’ Hall, and Lambeth Palace Library in London. Eight of these maps, however, are held by London Metropolitan Archives and may be accessed at Guildhall Library in the City of London. These maps were deposited as part of the larger collections of the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors (CLC/L/MD/F/016E/MS34100/208 and CLC/L/MD/F/016D/MS34100/134), the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers (CLC/L/IB/H/002 and CLC/L/IB/G/097/MS17298) and the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers (LMA uncatalogued, formerly GL Folio 2, No. 8). All but one of the maps could be described as reconnaissance surveys of the estates of these companies as they sought to understand the geography of the new lands which had been granted to them. One map in the Merchant Taylors’ collection breaks this mould, giving an outline plan of the town of Macosquin (see Plate 1), which became the main settlement of the company in Londonderry.

While the cartographers associated with a number of these maps cannot be identified, three mapmakers – Thomas Raven, Simon Kingsland and Thomas Croddin – all have surviving maps within this collection. Raven is perhaps the most well-known of these, having been the City’s surveyor in Londonderry during the early stages of the plantation. Kingsland has been noted as a book-keeper to the Livery Companies, while Croddin’s career as an estate surveyor spanned both sides of the Irish Sea (see Sarah Bendall, Dictionary of land surveyors and local map-makers of Great Britain and Ireland, c.1530-1850 (London, 1997), 122 and 297).

Maps of the Ironmongers’ proportion

Plate 2: Worshipful Company of Ironmongers’ Proportion, Simon Kingsland, 1613 (LMA CLC/L/IB/H/002)

Focusing on the maps of the Ironmongers’ Company gives something of an introduction to the content of these preliminary surveys. The most significant map within their collection is that titled ‘A Buttall of the Lands No 7 [lying] in the Baronj of Colraine belonging to the Worshipful the Company of Ironmongers’ (see Plate 2). The Company appeared anxious to obtain a map of their lands from their earliest dealings with their Irish estates. A request for a survey and map to be undertaken by Thomas Raven is noted in their Court Orders as early as February 1613 (CLC/L/IB/B/001/MS16967/003, f. 128v, February 1613). Raven, however, does not appear to have produced a map for the company, with much of the cartographic work on their estate attributed to Simon Kingsland. The surviving map measures approximately 774mm × 970mm; has a scale bar, which allows a modern estimated scale of 1:25,000 to be determined; and has a compass rose, with north above. The map also includes some basic embellishments such as a black line border, a decorative cartouche bearing its title and a coat-of-arms.

In terms of its content, Kingsland very deftly outlined the extent of the Ironmongers’ lands in Londonderry, situating it within the context of the surrounding proportions belonging to the Skinners’, Mercers’ and Merchant Taylors’companies. Within the Ironmongers’ estate, he also provided a snapshot of the boundaries of townlands and churchlands, inscribing place names, many of which were drawn from their native Irish heritage. The physical landscape of the proportion was also laid bare, with a keen focus on the rivers, mountains and woods. Their presence, of course, did much to determine the viability of the company’s estate. Mountains, for example, had to be excluded from areas of potential settlement, while rivers were important in determining areas for agricultural production. In turn, woods offered the basic building blocks for their new settlement.

Why are these maps important?

The importance of these maps from the Londonderry Plantation cannot be underestimated. While to modern viewers, they appear as basic drawings with little by way of modern cartographic expectation, they became fundamental tools in the development and shaping of plantation landscapes in Londonderry. It was their content, alongside written reports, that helped the livery companies, and other landlords, to reshape the landscape of Gaelic Ireland, moulding the lands into estates that were reminiscent of contemporary England. In turn, as the plantation took hold, they became monitoring tools for these changes, often showcasing the new developments, including the many villages and towns that became embedded in Londonderry’s landscape.

About the author

Annaleigh Margey is a Lecturer in History at Dundalk Institute of Technology. Her book, Mapping Ireland, c.1550-1636: a catalogue of the manuscripts maps of early modern Ireland will be published in 2017 by the Irish Manuscripts Commission.

At the International Council on Archives Congress at Seoul, South Korea Friday 9 September 2016, London Metropolitan Archives’ Tim Harris presented on the collaboration and cooperation which resulted in the successful outcomes of the Great Parchment Book Project.

The audience was excited to see the transformation of the Great Parchment Book and several members of the audience noted the excellence of the blog.

One member of ICA, Gerard Foley from the Archives of Western Australia, revealed that he had found two of his ancestors who had been carpenters in Londonderry.

People were pleased to learn that the products and outcome were continuing to be shared and developed.

For another view from Seoul, go to the Borthwick Institute of Archives blog post Up and AtoM: The Borthwick Institute Goes To South Korea.

THIS RECRUITMENT HAS NOW CLOSED!

London Metropolitan Archives’ conservation studio, which undertook the work on the Great Parchment Book, is recruiting a book conservator for a grant funded project fixed term for 12 months.

The project aim is to assess the condition and treat items from selected Anglo-Jewish archives held at LMA. The collections consist of a great variety of documents and formats such as volumes, bundles, photographs and modern media created between the late sixteenth century and today.

The purpose of the post is twofold: to assess the condition of selected collections and to carry out the necessary conservation treatments to allow their safe access and long term preservation. The successful candidate will be asked to run a survey in order to establish the condition of the items, propose conservation treatments and packaging solutions, and estimate the time to stabilise the items unfit for handling and access. In the second phase of the project, the conservator will carry out the conservation treatments proposed in the survey and manage the work of repackaging that will be carried out by selected volunteers.

We are looking for applicants with a recognised qualification in the fields of paper, archive or book conservation or equivalent and the necessary skills and experience to undertake this challenging project. The post holder will work to the Conservation Studio Manager, Dr Caroline de Stefani.

Please see Job Information Pack for more information.

Closing date: 19 September 2016 at 12 noon.

Interviews: Tuesday-Wednesday 27-28 September 2016

To apply, go to City of London Jobs and search for “conservator”.

Contact 020 7332 3978 (24hr answerphone) quoting reference number CHL175 if you experience any problems. A minicom service for the hearing impaired is available on 020 7332 3732.

The Great Parchment Book website is proving to be an essential online resource in several fields of study, with even the blog itself used as a case study.

Examples which have come to our attention recently include:

The Great Parchment Book project is being used as a case study in an undergraduate course in the Digital Humanities. If text then code is taught by Dr Diane Jakacki at Bucknell University, a liberal arts college in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania in the United States of America. On the course students write and critique code as a form of textual engagement, and amongst other skills, gain competency with TEI­-compliant XML, the code we used to encode the text of the Great Parchment Book and facilitate online accessibility. Currently, London Metropolitan Archives, in partnership with UCL, are looking at how we can make the XML from the Great Parchment Book more widely available.

The Great Parchment Book is referenced as an enriching research resource for understanding the history of the Ulster Plantation on Trinity College Library Dublin’s learning website about the 1641 Depositions. The digitisation of the depositions, which we have looked at previously on the Great Parchment Book blog, has opened up these sources for use in the classroom and 1641 Depositions Bridge21 Learning Resources website enables secondary school students in Ireland to hone their skills as young historians while learning about the plantations, the 1641 rebellion and their impact on Irish history.

The National Manuscript Conservation Trust, to which we are grateful for funding the Great Parchment Book conservation project, features it as a case study on its website and also highlights the blog as one of the best about conservation projects that have benefitted from NMCT grants.

The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) also asked London Metropolitan Archives to write about the pleasures and pitfalls of writing the Great Parchment Book blog for their own blog as a case study.

Australia and New Zealand’s Inside History Magazine has included a link to the Great Parchment Book website in its latest issue as a handy hint for those searching for Northern Ireland ancestors, especially those from the County of Londonderry. This has been driving a lot of traffic to the website since it was published, and some of those visitors are then going on to look at other related Irish genealogical sources for which we provide information and links.

Sometimes we are frustrated as we can’t see exactly what the Great Parchment Book website is being used for. For example, we know it’s  referenced in an online learning module run by the University of Haifa in Israel, but we can’t see what it is as it’s for registered users only!

The Great Parchment Book website is used cross-discipline and worldwide, reflecting the comprehensive and enduring nature of the work it represents. Not least, the Great Parchment Book is used by our close partners at UCL in the Centre for Digital Humanities and Department of Computer Science and you can follow this on UCL’s own website relating to the project and on related pages.

There are an estimated 70 million people worldwide claiming Irish ancestry and we are very pleased that the Great Parchment Book project is now accessible and available online to all those who wish to trace their Irish roots.

To continue the story of those recorded in the Great Parchment Book, the genealogical collections of Derry City and Strabane Archive & Genealogy service offer another significant resource. These include a database of over one million records including traditional family history records such as birth, marriage and death records.

The Archive & Genealogy service is currently in partnership with Irish Family History Foundation to offer a Genealogy  service.  The database of over one million records, dating from 1642 to 1922, created between 1982 and 2007 as a project of the Inner City Trust, from the major civil and church registers of the city and county of Derry~Londonderry and Inishowen, County Donegal is now available at www.derry.rootsireland.ie. Please note that this is a subscription website.

You can also keep up to date with the Great Parchment Book project and associated activities on Twitter using the hashtag #greatparchmentbook.

We’ve recently posted images of the viewing of the Great Parchment Book at the ‘Without Borders’ LGBTQ ALMS Conference (22-24 June 2016) at London Metropolitan Archives on 24 June 2016. Visitors given a behind-the-scenes tour of the LMA Conservation Studio were thrilled to see original folios from such an iconic manuscript on display especially as it had only been added to the UNESCO UK Memory of the World earlier that week (on 21 June). They were also able to chat to Great Parchment Book project conservator Rachael Smither (on the right in the photograph) who was on hand to talk about the conservation project and answer questions.

We’ve been posting to Twitter more frequently as it enables us to post snippets of information not suitable for the more extended format of the blog. It also allows us to publicise blog posts, highlight different aspects of the project, make connections with other related material and activities, and exploit events such as the UNESCO UK Memory of the World award. Overall this has had the effect of driving more traffic to the website and making the project more widely known.

We are delighted to announce  that on 21 June 2016 at the UK Memory of the World awards at the Senedd in Cardiff, the Great Parchment Book of the Honourable the Irish Society was inscribed to the UK register of the UNESCO Memory of the World.

Copyright The Welsh Government

Philippa Smith, representing London Metropolitan Archives, was presented with the award certificate by Wales First Minister Carwyn Jones who gave the keynote speech. The opening speech had been given by Gary Brace from the UK National Commission to UNESCO. Chair of the UK Memory of the World Committee Elizabeth Oxborrow Cowan also spoke about the careful and skilful management needed to preserve our documentary heritage. The Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Archives and History, Chris Skidmore MP, sent a supportive message. Finally, a special award was made to George Boston and David Dawson who established the Memory of the World programme in the UK.

Copyright The Welsh Government

The following Inscriptions have now been added to Memory of the World (MoW) UK Register, recognising a wide variety of remarkable historical documents from across the UK, dating from the 9th to the 19th century:

• Archive of Charles Booth’s Inquiry into the Life and Labour of the People in London, 1886 – 1903
• The Great Parchment Book of The Honourable The Irish Society, 1639
• The Exeter Book, c.965 – 975
• The Laboratory Notebooks of Michael Faraday, 1820 – 1862
• Medieval Archive of Canterbury Cathedral
• Survey of the Manors of Chickhowell and Tretower, 1587
• The Correspondence Collection Robert Owen, 1821 – 1858

In addition, congratulations are also due to the Churchill Archives and the Haig Papers.  These Inscriptions have been added to the International Register, which celebrates documentary heritage of outstanding international significance.

These Inscriptions reflect the diversity of the UK’s rich documentary heritage, which is filled with stories about people, places and events.  Documentary heritage is the documented memory of humankind, and it deserves to be cherished, celebrated, preserved and, above all, shared.

The Great Parchment Book has been recognised as a hugely significant record of the Ulster Plantation in the early 17th century, providing a unique insight into an important period of the history of Northern Ireland for which there are few other original archives surviving.

It cannot be overstated how important the Plantation of Ulster was to the history of Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom and Ireland and it still has influence today. The Great Parchment Book is central to the study of the Plantation and the social, economic, cultural, religious, and political history of Northern Ireland.

The Great Parchment Book provides a key record of the population of early 17th century Ulster at the time of the Plantation, not just the Protestant settlers who came from both England and Scotland, but also the native Irish, and exceptionally many women, at all social levels. It contains unique information about the properties and individual buildings they inhabited, as well as the extent and layout of the towns of Coleraine and Londonderry.

The Great Parchment Book has considerable significance for the people of Ulster, Northern Ireland and Ireland more generally; it is regarded as iconic by the Irish Society and the City of London.

UNESCO established the Memory of the World (MoW) Programme in 1992. The programme vision is that the world’s documentary heritage belongs to all, should be fully preserved and protected for all and permanently accessible to all without hindrance. The UK Register (one of several country-level programmes from around the world) recognises documentary heritage deemed by a panel of experts to be of outstanding significance to the UK. The seven new inscriptions join the 50 already listed on the UK register.

The addition of the Great Parchment Book means that London Metropolitan Archives, City of London Corporation has four items inscribed to the UK Register, the other items being the Charter of William I to the City of London, London County Council Bomb Damage Maps, and Robert Hooke’s Diary, 1672-83. This is more than any other local authority archive service and demonstrates the importance of the History of London collections held by LMA which, along with the printed collections at Guildhall Library, are also Designated as Outstanding by the Arts Council England.

The Derry City and Strabane Archive & Genealogy service is responsible for the preservation, interpretation and creation of access to the civic records of the Council and its predecessor, the Londonderry Corporation.

The extensive archive collection constitutes an extremely valuable source of information both for the history of the City and the Council and provides a comprehensive record of the city’s development from the latter half of the 17th century to the present day. It consists of minute books, legal documents, architectural drawings and plans, and private collections. The material ranges from business collections, and items relating to industry, shirt factories, railways, political movements and social history. The genealogical collections includes a database of over one million records including traditional family history records such as birth, marriage and death records.

Some of the records of the Londonderry Corporation have been digitised and are available online in association with the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) specifically:

The Londonderry Corporation minute books from 1673. In the late 17th and 18th centuries, the city’s business life consisted of merchants and craftsmen such as butchers and bakers, tailors and shoemakers, smiths and saddlers, joiners and coopers.

Records of the Freemen of the City of Londonderry from 1675. In the 17th and 18th centuries, only Freemen of the City were entitled to conduct business, own property and receive protection within the walled city.

These records continue the stories of the inhabitants of Londonderry started in the Great Parchment Book.

Find out more about the records held by the Derry City and Strabane Archive & Genealogy service here.

30 May 2016 was the third anniversary of the Great Parchment Book website. To mark this, we’re taking a look at the project through numbers, from the names in the surviving folios of the book itself to the visitors to the website with some interesting facts along the way.

1 Great Parchment Book of The Honourable The Irish Society

165 folios and fragments, stored in 30 bespoke boxes (originally 16)

11 Great Twelve livery companies’ holdings recorded (should be 12, but the Merchant Taylors’ portion is missing)

1095 personal names indexed on the website including variations in spelling

992 place names indexed also including variations

49 occupations and titles recorded such as barber-surgeon, fellmonger, muster master and winecowper

120 entries in the glossary including occupations and titles, but also terms such as ballibetagh, creete, kill house, rampier, standall and vayle.

Nearly 92,700 page views of Great Parchment Book website and blog to 30 May 2016

121 blog posts including this one

270,000 visitors to Plantation, People, Perspectives exhibition in Derry Guildhall in the first year (opened 30 May 2013) when an original folio of the Great Parchment Book was on display

Almost 960,000 visitors to the exhibition to 30 May 2016 (several times the population of Derry and nearly half the population of Northern Ireland)

20 project partners including 14 funders

4 awards, 3 shortlisted/finalist, 1 highly commended

1 inscription on UK Memory of the World Register (inscribed on 21 June 2016)

All summed up as 1 unique record of the 17th century Plantation of Ulster

In London we are fortunate to have two leading centres for the study of digital humanities, the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities and King’s College London Department of Digital Humanities. The Great Parchment Book project and follow-on research is very closely allied to the former, but we also have had links to the latter.

Digital Humanities research takes place at the intersection of computational technologies and humanities and is a relatively new field of research and teaching. It is highly collaborative and typically works across a wide range of disciplines, involving different institutions, both nationally and internationally. It has a crucial role to play in developing the use of advanced technology in the arts and humanities, making possible new kinds of research which positively impact on cultural heritage and memory institutions, libraries, archives and digital culture.

Both UCLDH and King’s College Department of Digital Humanities offer MAs in Digital Humanities for which applications are currently open. Both have also produced very accessible videos which explain more about Digital Humanities research and study and are well worth viewing. Find out more via the links below:

UCLDH MA/MSc in Digital Humanities

UCLDH video

MA in Digital Humanities at King’s College London

King’s College Department of Digital Humanities video

The last few years have witnessed a movement towards a more open and inclusive Digital Humanities field. Intersectional studies are developing within Digital Humanities to try to bring a plurality of voices into the conversation.

KU Leuven in Belgium is hosting a conference on Intersectionality in Digital Humanities, 15-17 September 2016. KU Leuven’s Digital Humanities Task Force invites individual paper proposals, panel sessions, poster sessions, and tool demonstrations related to intersectionality in Digital Humanities. Lists of possible topics are available via the link below. Please note deadline for this call is 30 May 2016.

Confirmed speakers include Professor Melissa Terras from University College London who has been closely involved with LMA with the Great Parchment Book project and research into multispectral imaging.

Venue: KU Leuven, Belgium

Dates: 15-17 September 2016 (immediately after the Digital Humanities Summer School, 12-14 September 2016).

Find out more here.

An impressive line-up of world class speakers will be sharing their experience and recent findings and showcasing the power of  multispectral and hyperspectral imaging at a SEAHA special seminar in Oxford on 30 June 2016. This is an event not to be missed if you are an Imaging Scientist and Heritage professional keen to learn and share more about this exciting area of research.

Speakers include colleagues from UCL, LMA’s partners in the Great Parchment Book project with whom we are continuing to be involved in research around multispectral imaging under the auspices of SEAHA (the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Science and Engineering in Arts Heritage and Archaeology).

Delegates are also invited to submit a poster so they can share their own knowledge and discoveries.

Date & Time: 30 June 2016 09.30-19.00 (17.30-19.00 Wine Reception)

Location: Wolfson College, Linton Road, Oxford OX2 6UD

Price: £70.00
Includes registration, refreshments, sit down lunch and wine reception.

More details and booking information may be found here.

Great Parchment Book was pleased and proud to be part of the UK Blog Awards with all the other finalists at the Park Plaza, Westminster Bridge, London on Friday 29 April 2016.

It was a fun event taking the theme of Roald Dahl’s Big Friendly Giant in the centenary year of his birth which seemed very appropriate given the focus of the 2016 Awards on storytelling. A stilt-walking BFG strode around the event, and there were lots of bubbles, not only alcoholic! One room was decorated with life-like looking trees and scenery, and the canapés were smothered in edible flowers continuing the theme. The headline sponsor, Odeon Cinemas, even had a pop-up cinema – with popcorn of course.

There was a real buzz to the event with finalists not only enjoying their own moment of glory with their supporters, but connecting with other bloggers and finding out their stories, in my case ranging from the Cottages and Castles Blog (lettings agency business) to the Living With CMPA Blog (the personal story of a mum with a son with food allergy). This interaction has continued after the event on social media and is an important part of the Awards ethos.

The event was not only fun, but also slick. The host was Kate Russell with whom you may be familiar from the BBC’s technology programme Click. An award winner last year, she was warm, enthusiastic and funny, with a lovely line in off-the-cuff remarks when things didn’t go according to plan, but also super-efficient at keeping the awards presentation ceremony on track. After brief but pertinent welcome speeches from the UK Blog Awards Founder and MD, Gemma Newton, and Andy Edge, Commercial Director and Amy Rountree, Social Media Manager and Strategist, Odeon Cinemas, the awards were presented by category, with two highly commended in each, plus the winner.

The Arts and Culture category was up first so I didn’t have to long to wait. The Great Parchment Book blog didn’t win, but it was great to see it up on the big screen with the other finalists all of whom were made to feel special. As Gemma Newton wrote in the Awards programme: “All of the shortlisted candidates should be hugely proud of what they’ve achieved to reach this final stage … winning a UKBA is not easy.” I was then able to relax and enjoy the rest of the ceremony and celebrate with my neighbour, the author of the Living with CMPA Blog who won her category. The Arts and Culture category was won by the Honest Actors’ Blog. The winner of the headline award for the Best Storyteller was the Royal Mint Blog. Very well done to all the winning blogs.

The Great Parchment Book was the only archive blog in the competition and the only finalist from the heritage sector (although the Royal Mint Blog has a heritage dimension). It would be great next year to see more archive and heritage blogs getting involved in the UK Blog Awards, and making it through to the final. The Great Parchment Book did it, your blog can too! The Arts and Culture category is very wide, perhaps UK Blog Awards could encourage the heritage sector with a separate category, or at least make it Arts, Heritage and Culture?

You can find out more about the UK Blog Awards on its website and on social media especially Twitter @UKBlogAwards #ukba16; and Facebook /UKBlogAwards.

Previously on the Great Parchment Book blog we have looked at related sources such as the 1641 Depositions held at Trinity College Library Dublin.

The 1641 Depositions comprise 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 (Text Encoding Initiative) compliant format.

You can hear more about the project and it’s future at the forthcoming CERL Dublin Manuscripts Conference 25-27 May 2016 being held in the Library of Trinity College where Professor Jane Ohlmeyer, one of the Principal Investigators on the project, is speaking on ‘The 1641 Depositions: what now?’ in a session on ‘Post-digital issues and concerns 1615-1745’.

The conference is entitled ‘Unique and universal: challenges for the manuscript librarian’ and is the 7th conference of the European Manuscript Librarians Expert Group of CERL (the Consortium of European research Libraries).

The primary aims of the Group are to act as a forum for curatorial concerns, and to enhance understanding and practical cooperation among curators across Europe. The conference will focus on the themes of commemorations and anniversaries, materiality, and post-digital issues and concerns.

Find out more about the conference and how to register here.

PLEASE NOTE THIS RECRUITMENT IS NOW CLOSED!

LMA is recruiting for a book conservator for a grant funded project fixed term for 6 months.

The project aims to repair and repackage a selection of pre-1660 Diocese of London Consistory Court Books unfit for consultation owing to their condition to enable public access. It is funded by the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust, which also funded the conservation of the Great Parchment Book.

The post holder will be required to carry out conservation treatments based on up-to-date techniques on the volumes which can be described as early archival parchment bindings. The post holder will work to the Conservation Studio Manager, Dr Caroline de Stefani.

We are looking for applicants with a recognised qualification in the fields of paper, archive or book conservation or equivalent and the necessary skills and experience to undertake this challenging project.

To request an application pack please contact the City of London’s Corporate Recruitment Unit on 020 7332 3978 (24hr answerphone) or email cru@cityoflondon.gov.uk quoting the reference number (CHL 33D0931/001 or OCHL161). A minicom service for the hearing impaired is available on 020 7332 3179

The City of London Corporation is committed to Equal Opportunities and welcomes applications from all sections of the community.

Website: https://jobs.cityoflondon.gov.uk/

Closing date: noon, 18 April 2016
Interviews: 10-11 May 2016

With the successful outcome of the Great Parchment Book project well-established and in the public eye once again, we’ve been reflecting back on the different elements which made up the project and trying to make sense of the journey.

Over the past few weeks we have looked at conservation, digital imaging, transcription and textual encoding, historical importance and synergy with other sources, outreach and public recognition. To round up, we’re going to look at legacy and the future.

The conservation, digital reconstruction and resulting transcription of the Great Parchment Book have provided a lasting resource for historians researching the Plantation of Ulster in local, national and international contexts.

A schools programmes associated with the exhibition is underway in Derry. The Great Parchment Book is also being used in undergraduate teaching at the University of Ulster and is proving to be a vital resource for postgraduate and post-doctoral research. The website and project blog are also used extensively by students of conservation and digital humanities.

On the digital imaging side, UCL has enabled free access to the digital reconstruction process through a stand-alone version of the software (available on the UCL project page). The open-sourcing of UCL’s platform should enable other institutions to access the acquisition and restoration process themselves. Meanwhile LMA wants to explore the possibility of developing our role as a centre of expertise for the conservation, imaging, and digital restoration of distorted parchments and other damaged material, working in tandem with UCL to maintain the trajectory we have built up working on this together.

LMA is continuing to post updates on the project on the blog making connections with other digital projects and technologies revolutionising access to archives and cultural artefacts, and exploring the synergies with other documents relevant to the story that the Great Parchment Book has to tell. Watch this space!

The successful outcome of the Great Parchment Book project is now well-established and the project has been very much in the public eye. This post, in our occasional retrospective, is about public recognition.

The project was an ambitious collaborative undertaking and each element was a major piece of work in its own right and different funders were approached for each aspect of the project:

• The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council funded a four year Engineering Doctorate in the Virtual Environments, Imaging and Visualisation programme at University College London for the digital imaging and virtual reconstruction of the Great Parchment Book from September 2010.
• The National Manuscripts Conservation Trust awarded a grant for conservation in 2011.
• The Marc Fitch Foundation, the Irish Society and several of the Great Twelve City of London livery companies (Clothworkers’ Company, Drapers’ Company, Fishmongers’ Company, Goldsmiths’ Company, Ironmongers’ Company, Mercers’ Company, Merchant Taylors’ Company and Skinners’ Company) gave grants towards the transcription and textual encoding of the document and its online publication in 2012.
• Advice and support was given by Professor James Stevens Curl, The British Library, The National Archives and The Trustees of Lambeth Palace Library.
• Derry City Council Heritage and Museums Service, LMA and UCL also provided funding and staff time and resources.

The Great Parchment Book project has been nominated for a number of awards, evidence both of the importance of the document and the strength of the project.

• European Succeed Award 2014 (for digitisation focussing on textual content): Commendation of Merit.
• The Pilgrim Trust Award for Conservation 2015: shortlisted.
• Royal Historical Society Public History Prize 2015: nominated.
• UK Blog of the Year 2016: finalist.

Finally, the importance of the Great Parchment Book project has been recognised at the highest level. First Minister of Northern Ireland, the Rt Hon Peter D Robinson MLA, wrote in 2013 that “I cannot praise the work of the LMA & UCL highly enough. In completing this mammoth project they have succeeded in opening a veritable treasure trove of information relating to a most significant period in the history of Ulster; and illustrating as never before the central role played by the London Guilds in the creation and preservation of the city of Londonderry and its environs.”

Also in 2013, the Lord Lieutenant of the city of Derry, Sir Donal Keegan, was shown a folio relating to the city when he was presented with the Freedom of the City of London. During his visit to the United Kingdom in 2014, the President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, viewed a display of folios from the Great Parchment Book at a State Banquet in his honour at Guildhall.

You can find out more about awards and other project updates connected with the Great Parchment Book on the blog (go to the end of the page once you’ve clicked the link to read in chronological order).

The Great Parchment Book had been inaccessible to researchers for over 200 years owing to its fragile state. Our overriding objective with the project was to make the manuscript available again to as wide a range of people as possible, not just for the benefit of scholars and other researchers, but also for the communities to which it was most relevant. In our occasional series of posts looking back at the project, we turn our attention to engagement and outreach.

The original ambition was to produce a digitally reconstructed and fully accessible manuscript that could take pride of place in the exhibition in Derry Guildhall opening in June 2013 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the building of the city walls during Derry’s year as UK City of Culture.

Overall, the project was more successful than we could have hoped. The Great Parchment Book website went live on 30 May 2013 on the eve of the opening of the Derry Guildhall exhibition; it features a blog and an embedded video. Since its launch it has attracted 87,000 page views to date and counting, and has been a great success with a whole range of people around the world including academic researchers, local and family historians, conservators and those interested in the digital humanities.

The exhibition curated by Derry City Council Heritage and Museums Service entitled Plantation: People, Process, Perspectives opened in Derry’s Guildhall in June 2013. The exhibition had nearly 270,000 visitors in its first year and has had over 864,000 visitors to the end of 2015 including school groups. Such has been its popularity that it is set to continue for the foreseeable future. Visitor feedback has been very positive, including high praise for the original archive material which for the first ten months included an original folio of the Great Parchment Book and other documents from the Irish Society archives.

All aspects of the project have been celebrated and presented by LMA and University College London at various conferences and events including the Archives and Records Association Conference, Brighton 2012; Digital Humanities Conference, Nebraska USA 2013; Plantation Families event, Belfast/Derry, 27-28 September 2013; Opposites Attract: Science and Archives, LMA 21 March 2014; STEM from the City careers day, City of London Guildhall 27 June 2014; Great Parchment Book Day, LMA 25 July 2014; International Council on Archives annual conference, Girona, Spain 15 October 2014; University of Melbourne, Australia 31 October 2014; ARA Conservation Training Committee and Instructors, LMA 20 November 2014; Association for Historical and Fine Art Photography’s annual conferences, London 27 November 2014 and 22 October 2015.

The project has been published in a range of publications (the UCL project page has a list of the most significant and provides access to the free software produced in the course of the project) and is featured on many websites including the European History Primary Sources (EHPS) website and that of the International Council on Archives and the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust. The Great Parchment Book project has featured in an article in the Observer, 5 July 2015 on conservation technology.

It is used in teaching history at all levels especially in Northern Ireland, as well as for teaching students of conservation and digital humanities around the world.

You can find out more about events connected with the Great Parchment Book on the blog (go to the end of the page once you’ve clicked the link to read in chronological order).

The Great Parchment Book records the landholdings in the Proportions allocated to the twelve Great Companies, but each of these Companies was also associated with many smaller Companies which could not afford to manage a Proportion in their own right. While the Great Parchment Book makes no mention of these smaller Companies, other documents reveal the tremendous burden of the Plantation on them. Dr Patricia Stewart, who transcribed and encoded the Great Parchment Book, has been looking at the archives of the Plumbers’ Company, an Associated Company of the Vintners, which held lands in the eastern part of Londonderry.

The Plumbers’ Court Records (which may be accessed at Guildhall Library reference CLC/L/PH/B/001/MS02208) show that both the Company’s individual members and the Company as a whole found the Plantation an unmanageable expense.

On 5 February 1629, the Company agreed to repay to the widow of the deceased Master Richard Green all the money that her husband contributed towards the Plantation in Ireland, ‘in respect of her extreame poverty’ (after first ensuring that any money still owed by her husband was deducted from the sum). That the Court had to include the caveat ‘provided that this be noe president for others in the like kinde’ is perhaps telling.

During the first decades of the 17th century there were several surveys made of the state of affairs in Londonderry, and these resulted in serious disagreements between the Crown and the City of London/Livery Companies over whether they were honouring their obligations in settling the Plantation. In 1635, Charles I took the City of London and The Irish Society to trial in the Star Chamber for the mismanagement and neglect of the Plantation. The Plumbers’ Company Court Records for 9 June 1636 include a copy (in Latin) of the ‘letter of Attourney to Master Hooker to defend the Company’s suite in the Starchamber touching the Irish lands’. The trial ended in favour of the Crown, unsurprisingly, and the resulting wholesale seizure of lands held by the Livery Companies led to the 1639 survey recorded in the Great Parchment Book.

In 1641 Charles, motivated by his need to borrow money to finance various wars, promised to restore the lands to the Livery Companies. On 13 June 1642, the Plumbers’ Court Records show that the City of London was asked to lend Parliament £100,000, the Plumbers’ share of which was £250. Two Wardens of the Company, Samuel North and Richard Orton, and two Assistants, William George and William Haynes, offered to lend the Company £50 each to go towards this loan to Parliament. As security for the loan, some the Company’s plate and tenements were made over to them. An entry from 7 December 1642, states that as ‘the Companie stand endebted to severall persons (at interest) amounteing in all to three hundred pownds and upwards’, the rest of the plate should be sold to the highest bidder and the money be used to pay off these debts ‘and to noe other use or end whatsoever’.

It seems that the Plumbers didn’t pay the £200 lent by North et al. to Parliament, as an entry from 13 December 1642 indicates that a few days earlier the Company received a further official order for this money. The Company was required ‘to carrye in the same somme before Mundaye next on the afternoone or otherwise to appeare before the said Committee on tuesdaye next at three of the clocke in the afternoone at Haberdashers hall, to show cause of your not performeing the same’.

The Plumbers’ answer to this was to plead poverty. To begin with, they recently purchased land and built their Hall, and what with paying workmen and other charges, were in debt over £800 and had to mortgage the said Hall (and other buildings) for £500. Then there was the £100 plus lent for ‘the service of Ireland’ which should have been repaid to them in October of 1641 but hadn’t been yet. In addition, those members who were able to lend money had already done so, the Company had no Common Stock and no other revenues, and business was down. In short, the Plumbers were ‘not able to advance any more moneys nor dischardge theire said ngadgements for all which causes and reasons they humbly desire the said honourable Comittee wold bee satisfied with this theire humble and true answer without pressing them any further uppon the said Order’.

This was not the end of the Plumbers’ money problems, as several more entries running until 1643 detail requests from Parliament for other sums, and their efforts to pay these (or not). Records such as these show the ambivalence and frustration that must have been felt by the smaller Livery Companies (and by the larger ones as well) at their inability to escape what was turning out to be a bottomless money pit.

Continuing with the occasional series of posts reflecting on the different elements which make up the Great Parchment Book project, we now turn our attention to historical importance and synergy with other sources.

The Great Parchment Book is a hugely important record of the Ulster Plantation of the early 17th century documenting an important and formative period of the history of Britain and Ireland. It cannot be overstated how important the Plantation of Ulster was to the history of these islands and it still has resonance today.

So important was the Great Parchment Book to the Irish Society that it was rescued from the fire at Guildhall in 1786 and carefully preserved in spite of its parlous state as it provided evidence of its property, rights and legitimacy.

Original archives and other artefacts are considerably lacking for this period of Irish history. If the Great Parchment Book did not exist, key data about landholding and population in Ulster at this time (not only the English and Scottish settlers, but also the native Irish) at this crucial period would be undiscoverable. It contains unique information about properties and individual buildings, as well as their extent and layout including that of the towns of Coleraine and Londonderry. It also contains unique and exceptional information about the population from all social backgrounds including references to women about whom there is otherwise very little.

Although unique, the information contained with the Great Parchment Book has a synergy with others sources for early modern Ulster and we have explored some of these on the Great Parchment Book website. They include Thomas Raven’s maps of Londonderry, 1622, held at Lambeth Palace Library and Drapers’ Hall, the muster rolls held by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, and the 1641 Depositions (witness testimonies concerning experiences of the 1641 Irish rebellion) held at Trinity College Dublin Library which are also available digitally. It is also useful to connect to other digital and published resources such as the digital atlas of Derry–Londonderry and the Irish Historic Towns Atlas, and publications of the Irish Manuscripts Commission.

You can find out more about the history of the Plantation on the website and the synergy of the Great Parchment Book with other sources for the Plantation on the blog (go to the end of the page once you’ve clicked the link to read in chronological order).

As we reflect on the different elements which made up the Great Parchment Book project in this continuing series of posts, we now turn our attention to transcription and textual encoding.

Alongside the conservation and digital imaging work, a palaeographer, Dr Patricia Stewart, was employed by London Metropolitan Archives partly funded by the Marc Fitch Fund and some of the Great Twelve City of London livery companies to prepare a readable and exploitable version of the text. The aim was to produce both a transcription of the original text as found in the Book, the ‘original transcript’, and also a modernised version, the ‘modern transcript’ with an accompanying glossary.

To enable the Great Parchment Book to be as comprehensively searchable as possible, it was decided to encode the text in XML compliant with the Textual Encoding Initiative. TEI is a set of guidelines which specify encoding methods for machine-readable texts. It is widely used by archives, libraries, museums and individual scholars to present texts for online research and preservation.

Patricia already had some familiarity with TEI, but had to think about how it would work in the context of the Great Parchment Book, and to think about transcription conventions and methodology. To begin with, though, she had to learn about the historical and archival context of the manuscript and its structure and arrangement. There was also a steep learning curve getting to grips with Irish personal and place names and some of the less familiar terms used. Last but not least there was the distorted text itself which in places was illegible or even missing.  Patricia was able to supply some text through her knowledge of how the manuscript was arranged and its use of formulaic text. She was also able to re-order some of the folios and identify a few of the fragments.

Patricia worked with Kazim Pal, the doctoral student, to test the flattening software as it was being developed to see whether it made deciphering and transcribing the text any easier. She also was involved in the discussions with the website designers Headscape on how the transcripts and glossary would be presented on the website alongside the original and flattened images of the individual parchment folios.

This painstaking work took longer than expected and so the original six month project was extended to eight months running from September 2012 to May 2013 to enable the transcripts and glossary to be completed and uploaded to the website.

Patricia continued to be involved in the project by presenting papers at events such as the Plantation Families: People, Records and Resources event held in Belfast and Londonderry on 27–28 September 2013 and the Great Parchment Book Day at LMA on 25 July 2014.

The digitisation of the Great Parchment Book was recognised in 2014 when the project received a European Succeed Award (for digitisation focussing on textual content) Commendation of Merit.

You can find out more about the transcription and encoding of the Great Parchment Book on the blog (go to the end of the page once you’ve clicked the link to read in chronological order).

In our previous post in this occasional series reflecting on the different elements which make up the Great Parchment Book project we looked at conservation; now it’s the turn of digital imaging.

It had been evident for many years that traditional conservation alone would not produce sufficient results to make the Great Parchment Book accessible, although there had been at least one attempt in the past. Following discussions with conservation and imaging experts, it was decided to flatten the parchment sheets as far as possible appropriate to their fragile state to enable digital imaging with the ultimate aim of reconstructing the manuscript digitally. We knew from the first that this was an undertaking without a certain result as we were committed to exploring new techniques and technologies; nothing else had any chance of success.

A partnership with UCL established a four year Engineering Doctorate in the Virtual Environments, Imaging and Visualisation programme in September 2010 (jointly funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and LMA) with the intention of developing software that would make the distorted text legible. The doctoral student, Kazim Pal, was supervised by Melissa Terras, Director of the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities and Professor of Digital Humanities in the Department of Information Studies at University College London and Tim Weyrich, Professor of Visual Computing in the Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics group in the Department of Computer Science, University College London and Deputy Director of the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities.

During the digitisation phase, which in part ran alongside the conservation, a set of images was captured for each page and used to generate 3D models. Ground-breaking software was developed to allow these models to be flattened and browsed virtually.

Kazim’s work was more successful than we could have hoped with the digitally flattened images of the folios featuring on the dedicated Great Parchment Book website alongside a transcript making the Great Parchment Book available for consultation by researchers once more.

The digitisation of the Great Parchment Book was recognised in 2014 when the project received a European Succeed Award (for digitisation focussing on textual content) Commendation of Merit.

You can explore the digital imaging of the Great Parchment Book in detail on the blog (go to the end of the page once you’ve clicked the link to read in chronological order).

See also the UCL project web page which includes access to the free software produced in the course of the project and the amazing video of the flattening software in action.

We also continue to highlight other developments which are revolutionising access to archives through the use of new technology and innovation on the blog.