Link: GRIFFITH'S VALUATION & LANDS RECORDS

[Valerie1945]

Valuation Books Office. Does anyone know if the House Books or Tenure Books are available on line at all?
I have found the Field Books to be a valuable resource as two of my relatives were included in the survey. It would be lovely to know what the Dwelling was like and what the tenure was exactly.
Any ideas welcomed. Many thanks. Valerie

[hallmark]

http://census.nationalarchives.ie/search/vob/house_books.jsp

[hallmark]

http://census.nationalarchives.ie/search/vob/tenure_books.jsp

[Phil Donnelly]

Does anyone know if the Griffiths Valuation books in their original form can be viewed online?
I assume they would have been hand-written.
I have a large area of land in the Divis Townland (in Co. Antrim) which has no one's name attached to it in the typed GV listing.
I would like to check if there may have been an error in transcription?

 

[Elwyn Soutter]

I don’t think the original records are on-line. PRONI may have them though. The Primary Valuation records for Divis were published in 1861. I assume you are referring to plot 5?

The Valuation Revision records which take Griffiths forward, and which are on the PRONI website, don’t show any tenant or owner of that plot up to at least 1920. (I didn’t bother checking after that). The Revision records just show 4 main plots as per the original.

Not sure what to make of that, but I don’t think checking the original records will reveal the mystery owner of plot 5.

Note that the maps are not contemporaneous with the original valuation so you do get extra plots appearing in the records which are not in the Primary Valuation, but that doesn’t appear to be the case here as plot 5 just doesn’t get a mention anywhere at all, save on the map.

[Phil Donnelly]

I don’t think the original records are on-line. PRONI may have them though. The Primary Valuation records for Divis were published in 1861. I assume you are referring to plot 5?

Thanks for looking in to this.
What caught my attention about Divis is the tenant John Gilmore at plot 3 which is listed as being 142 Acres. Clearly that's wrong. By my calculations Plot 5 would be somewhere around that size though which leads me to think there was an error - either on the original sheets or the transcription.

A 2011 archaeological report by a QUB team describes the ruins of three adjacent cottiers cottages on plot 5 in the early part of the 19th century but they hit the same issue with the GV listing and so couldn't identify the owner/s.
https://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/uas/UASfilestore/CoAntrim/Filetoupload,545560,en.pdf

The man who held most of the land adjacent in Black Mountain Townland was Hercules Dean (my ggg grandfather) who died during the famine before the GV.
Hercules' daughter Rose married a Gilmore.



 

[Elwyn Soutter]

Interesting.  I have walked around the National Trust paths up there a couple of times.

It looks to me as though there is a mistake in the compilation of the map rather than in the records. The Griffiths clerks would not have continued with only 4 plots for the next 60 years if in fact there were 5. They would have corrected the mistake fairly promptly. 

You could ask PRONI if they have the originals. If they don’t, National Archives in Dublin may.

The other thing is that Griffiths didn’t record every single property. I think the cut off was £5 RV, in the early years anyway. So very low value properties, particularly cottiers and the like were excluded (being largely made of turf they didn’t last long). So, apart from errors in the mapping, there could have been houses in Divis townland not shown in Griffiths records.

[Phil Donnelly]

Thanks for the feedback on this.

I'll follow it up with PRONI.