The Irish road network in 1778

In my place of work I have access to the first real road map of Ireland, a book commissioned in late summer 1776 and published in 1778, replete with many illustrations including one large foldout map of the entire island. This map was published on 13 November 1778 in Taylor and Skinner's Maps of the Roads of Ireland. It was republished in 1968 by Dr J.H. Andrews, the early modern cartographic historian.

Almost all of the main T roads and future N roads were in place by this time. However, taking the route from Cork to Dublin as an example, travellers left Cork and travelled north as far as Mitchelstown before they then took what is now the R665 (Mitchelstown - Ballyporeen - Clogheen) to Clonmel and then onwards via the old T6 (Clonmel - Kilkenny - Kilcullen - Naas; today's N24, N76, N9 and N7), rather than head to Clonmel via Cahir.

The N7, N8, and N6 were all in place in 1778 however, though pavement quality was probably extremely poor in many parts.

I photocopied the map today but the machine jammed up so I'm missing the northern counties. The copy I made is size A3, so it's awkward to photograph, but I have taken pictures of parts of the map which I post here now for anyone who's interested to look at. I have crudely lined the county borders in blue ink.















I have come across a reference to a document from the 1660s about a fruit merchant from Kilkenny robbed by highwaymen on the road to Dublin. The historian who cited the document was more concerned with the economy of the time (i.e. the penetration of merchantable New World goods into it) than with the road network; but it might be possible to pinpoint the precise road that the incident occurred on. I'm not researching Irish history at the moment though, so it will be a long time before I get a chance to look at it.