A few notes on viewing Tithe Records at the National Library of Ireland :
There's an index book to the Tithes in the Genealogy room - this contains an alphabetical list of all civil parishes covered. Example of an entry :
Taney 1825 9/70 35
1825 is the year of that section, 9/70 is the Tithe reference and 35 is the film number you need. The films, along with the RC parish films, are in metal cabinets on the left in the room across from the Genealogy room. The Tithe films are located to the right of the rack. When you take the film you need, replace the blank slot with one of the 'in use' film boxes.
The records include similar details to Griffith's - i.e. occupier, area of land (which can be handy for cross-reference with Griffith's data), valuation etc, but without the Lessor. There are often comments about the type or quality of the land - e.g. 'good pasture', 'fine arable', 'some bog' etc. The layout varies a little - some parishes have more columns relating to the valuation over the left and right leaves, others just one set of entries per side - some extracts below. Note that Tithe records do not include towns and cities, and there are also many property exemptions.
The Film room has a number of microfilm machines - a good idea to 'claim' one as you arrive, in case it gets busy while you are finding your film references etc. There are also PCs with scanners and printing facilities, but these should not be used for searching, just for printing out entries after you have located them. Although it does mean you have to unspool your film on the viewer, reload on the scanner and find the details again, so it's a good idea to have some 'land marks' noted to help.
There are a number of parishes on each film and the TAB references (e.g. 9/70) are in order on the films and are included at the bottom of most pages to help navigate. There are also useful 'marker' pages consisting of a few horizontal white bars between each set of entries (e.g. between 32/10 Powerscourt, 32/11 Kilmacanogue and again before 32/12 Bray etc) which you can spot even in fast forward mode, and count your way forwards to the parish you need.
Pages printed are A4 and cost 10c each. There's a card machine in the film room - cards have €2 credit. They printer is in the Genealogy room. (The same PCs can be used to print entries from RC films).
There's also a useful combined index of Griffth's and the Tithes by Surname. There's a set of books by county, and the sections are listed by civil parish. Each surname that appears in either Griffth's and/or the Tithe's for the civil parish is listed. (no townland or first names are included). e.g.
Dillon G4 T
Walsh G4
this indicates that there were one or more Dillon listed for the parish in question in both Griffith's and the Tithes, but Walsh only appears in Griffith's entries.
Couple of complications I found that might be worth noting...
some townlands appear in different parishes to what you would expect based on Griffith's, the 1st Ed. OSI maps or 1851 townland index. I dont know how common this is but if this does occur then check neighbouring parishes - these will usually be on the same film.
Some films are spooled backwards - i.e. the first page you see reads 'end'. Makes for complicated mirror-image navigation.
and a minor point - some surnames have been 'tidied up' for the combined Griffith's/Tithes surnames index - e.g. some of my Wicklow ancestors often appear as Roach(e) - and appear like this in the Tithe records, but are listed as Roche in this index.
Shane
(images hosted on flickr)
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