News Letter

Archival Research

Archives of museums, government organisations, libraries and research bodies have historical documents that assist with the analysis of coastal change. They also allow study into the importance of the heritage under threat by revealing finds and important events. Many of these sources are becoming publicly accessible on websites.

Historical Maps

The British Library in London has atlases, maps and charts of harbours drawn for trade and defence. They also have drawings by visitors and officials of the towns and countryside. Many of the historical charts and sailing directions from the Admiralty have moved to the British Library but some remain in Taunton. This includes the hand-drawn surveys by the sailors. Charts often include sailing views of how the coast directly looked to the surveyors.

National Archives Kew has titles to shipwrecks, letters from captains about storms and dangers to shipping from the 17th century, construction of Napoleonic coastal defences, and correspondence about harbour improvements. The National Archives of Ireland has similar harbour development such as the 19th-century dredging of the River Boyne that removed ancient fords but allowed access upriver to Drogheda.

The National Library of Ireland includes piloting directions around the coast. Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin have map libraries and online resources. The National Museum of Ireland has a topographic archive of correspondence and descriptions about artefact discoveries. The National Monument Service holds many records of archaeological sites, including a shipwreck inventory, with information on surveys and excavations. This includes aerial surveys and older photographs of coastal monuments to compare with the site today.

Antiquarian Illustrations

Museums such as the National Maritime Museums in Dunlaoghaire and Greenwich have further charts, drawings and photographs on display. They also have artefacts for comparison with that found on coastal surveys. This can lead to understanding navigation and use of the coastal sites.

Sailing view of Annestown Beach with Woodstown promontory on the right from 1847 Survey of the South Coast of Ireland between the Bays of Tramore and Dungarvan by G. A Frazer (UKHO, L7194).
Sailing view of Annestown Beach with Woodstown promontory on the right from 1847 Survey of the South Coast of Ireland between the Bays of Tramore and Dungarvan by G. A Frazer (UKHO, L7194).
The Royal Irish Academy and Geological Survey Ireland have many images made by early documenters of the coast such as Thomas Westropp and George Du Noyer. Du Noyer was a geologist who painted coastal scenes in the 19th century. Westropp described many promontory forts around the turn of the last century.

There are further more local archives for counties, towns and harbours such as Dublin Civic, Dublin County, and Dublin Port. Then there are private archives, accessed with special permission, such as Woodhouse Estate in Stradbally, Co. Waterford.

Sailing view of the landing place on Great Saltee from 1847 survey of the Saltee Islands and adjacent Coast by G. A. Frazer (UKHO, L6207).
Sailing view of the landing place on Great Saltee from 1847 survey of the Saltee Islands and adjacent Coast by G. A. Frazer (UKHO, L6207).

Historical Documents

Historical documents can provide precisely dated, detailed descriptions of weather observations. These can be used to extend records of instrumental observations and to calibrate and increase confidence in natural archives of climate variability such as those from tree rings or sediments. Of particular interest for CHERISH are meteorological observations found in harbour, coastguard and lighthouse log books, where readings of pressure, wind direction, rainfall and temperature were noted often several times a day over many years. Many sources are yet to be digitised and transcribed into a usable format for climatological research although a huge effort is ongoing to rescue weather data through citizen science initiatives such as the Old Weather Project and Weather Rescue. We aim to retrieve records from CHERISH project study areas for analysis and to make them available for the scientific community.
The opening page of the diary of Joseph Jenkins of Trecefel, Tregaron in Cardiganshire describes on Monday 7th January 1839 ‘a complete hurricane which blows down timbers, roofs of houses and so on.’ The storm of 6th – 7th January 1839 caused devastating loss of life and damage in Ireland and is remembered as ‘The Night of the Big Wind’. Its impacts in Wales are less well documented.
The opening page of the diary of Joseph Jenkins of Trecefel, Tregaron in Cardiganshire describes on Monday 7th January 1839 ‘a complete hurricane which blows down timbers, roofs of houses and so on.’ The storm of 6th – 7th January 1839 caused devastating loss of life and damage in Ireland and is remembered as ‘The Night of the Big Wind’. Its impacts in Wales are less well documented.

Archival sources not only contribute to the construction of detailed time climate and weather histories but also provide a deeper narrative of an individual or community’s experience of extreme weather. Here, we can examine the ways in which people responded to specific events, how prepared they were and the types of coping strategies that were adopted. There is a wealth of material housed in our national repositories at the National Library of Wales and the National Archives of Ireland as well as in numerous regional archives and libraries. Members of the CHERISH team have been involved in the development of a database (TEMPEST) of narrative accounts of historical weather extremes across the UK as part of the AHRC funded project Weather Extremes. We will be building on this and previous research in Ireland (e.g. Sweeney, 2002) by gathering evidence on historical storms, flooding and coastal change and associated impacts from a range of sources such as personal diaries and correspondence; travelogues; newspaper reports; log books; maps; charts and literary sources.

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