Maggie O’Farrell

And it's quite a politically freighted portrait because standing behind Tomás looks quite anxious and

and the soldier was looking through a theodolite and it was just, I was absolutely flabbergasted to find it there.

Yeah, so the Ordnance Survey did their first version of the map and they started in 1820.

And they originally thought it was going to take them seven years to map Ireland.

It actually took them over 22 years for many reasons.

The project overran and overran, partly because when they first started, they had an edict that

no Irish people were to be employed on the project.

And they soon ran into lots of trouble with this because obviously the British army had problems communicating with local people.

And also it was run by the army.

So local people were understandably quite alarmed when they saw a large army division suddenly, you know, roll into town.

And I have read accounts that they would spend, the British surveyors would spend, you know, days, perhaps even weeks setting up their trig point, which is the point, you know, the...

sort of geographical location for ensuring that the measurements and the distances are accurate.

So they would set it up.

And I have read accounts of that sometimes during night, locals would just move it a few feet just to mess with them.

So obviously the project became very bogged down and very problematic.

So they had to employ people.

They realised that it had to employ Irish people and particularly Irish speakers on this project.

And my great-grandfather was one of them.

And, you know, so the first map of Ireland was finished in the very early 1840s.

And then, of course, as we all know, this enormous tragedy struck the country.