Rivers are a dominant and enduring feature of Irish towns and cities, natural elements that have consistently served and interacted with urban development. They are firmly embedded within the topographies of towns, confidently defining the shape of the network of streets and buildings that grow and change around them. The name or names of a town often relate to water. Belfast (modern Irish Béal Feirste) is ‘mouth of the sandbank’, or more expressively ‘approach to the tidal ford’ across the River Lagan, and Dublin (Dubhlinn) is simply ‘black pool’, a feature of the lowest reaches of the River Poddle. Bandon (Droichead na Bandan) is the name of the local river, possibly derived ultimately from a pagan goddess.

Major rivers were strategically important for the earliest Viking and Anglo-Norman town-builders and continue to act as focal points for urban life to the present day such as the River Shannon in Athlone and Limerick, Nore in Kilkenny, Boyne in Trim and Liffey in Dublin. Similarly the characteristic Rivers Foyle and Bandon would have played important roles in the development of the planned, plantation towns of Bandon and Derry in the seventeenth-century. In contrast, local rivers are at a remove in Armagh, Kells and Kildare, all examples of towns that evolved out of early Christian monasteries.

Places divided by a river often have a dual story. Counties were divided by rivers at Athlone, Belfast and Bray. The distinctive ‘Hightown’ and ‘Irishtown’ of medieval Kilkenny and Limerick were separated by their secondary channels, the River Breagagh and Abbey River respectively. Bridges, of course, act as the connectors and respond to the topography of their associated river as opposed to the importance or size of the urban centre — fourteen bridges were recorded prior to 1900 in the small town of Maynooth but only two in Derry.

Early large-scale town plans give us some insight into what life may have been like along the rivers. In Dublin, John Rocque’s map of 1756 (revised by Bernard Scalé in 1773) illustrates the city’s quays with ships populating the Liffey as far inland as the then custom house (present-day site of the Clarence Hotel, Wellington Quay) and focus clearly on the river (1). In Kilkenny, however, Rocque showed the houses and plots of the High Street backing onto the water on his map of that city in 1758 — more characteristically of an Irish country town, it is the significant mill and associated sites further north on the river that appear to dominate (2). Sometimes a watermill was located right in the middle of town, as at Longford and Sligo; more usually one or more mills were positioned towards the edge or even completely outside, as at Fethard, Trim and Tuam. An extract from the large-scale Ordnance Survey town plan of Longford from 1836 shows the River Camlin and the appropriately named Great Water Street (3). A distillery (1824) was succeeded by a corn mill, then a flour mill and eventually a saw mill (1911), each in turn harnessing the power of the Camlin River and utilising the storehouses and yards of this complex for its own purposes. Breweries and other manufactories, such as weavers in Dublin, often choose river sites, and early hospitals exploited the resource such as St Francis Abbey in Kilkenny 

The towns and topics discussed above are taken from the Irish Historic Towns Atlas (IHTA) series. The IHTA is a research project based in the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. Twenty-three Irish towns and cities have been published to date (seehttp://www.ria.ie/research/ihta/publications.aspx for full list). Each atlas contains large format maps and views of different dates that allow one to compare towns with one another. There are accompanying gazetteers that give detailed histories of streets and sites. A user’s guide has been published, which is especially aimed at teachers: Reading the maps: a guide to the Irish Historic Towns Atlas, by Jacinta Prunty and H.B. Clarke (2011) and the recently published Maps and texts: exploring the Irish Historic Towns Atlas provides further comparative studies. Special prices are available from the Royal Irish Academy for teaching sets of the above publications (contact s.gearty@ria.ie). The ‘Digital Atlas of Derry’ is available at http://www.ria.ie/digitalatlasderry.aspx. More information on the project at http://www.ihta.ie.

Prof. Gerry Kearns, NUI Maynooth

For this week of Geographical Awareness, the Geographical Society of Ireland has proposed that we think a little more about Water. It is in fact striking how important the engineering of water has been for the historical development of our own town of Maynooth. In Maynooth there are six significant water features: Ryewater, the river Lyreen, the Mill Race, the Joan Slade, the Royal Canal and the lakes in Carton House. The water is important as a resource, as a source of power, for communications, as a defensive feature, and an aesthetic embellishment but in each respect it requires to be engineered. Our waterlands are human and historical creations. With these points in mind, let’s take an imaginary walk around Maynooth.

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Dr. Frances Fahy, NUI Galway

The Geographical Society of Ireland (GSI), in conjunction with the Association of Geography Teachers in Ireland (AGTI), organised Ireland’s first Geography Awareness Week, which took place from the 11th-17th November 2012. The week was dedicated to celebrating the discipline of geography in Ireland and in addition to raising awareness among the general public, one of the key aims was to raise awareness among students and parents about the importance of geography and its practical applications. During the week a number of events took place in universities and post-primary schools across the country. 

Across the third level institutes, NUI Maynooth, UCD, St Patrick’s Drumcondra and NUI Galway invited post-primary geography students and teachers from local schools into their Departments and Schools. These students and teachers were provided with the opportunity to tour the laboratory and lecture facilities and hear from post graduate students and staff about what it is like to study and research in geography at third level. A series of public lectures was held throughout the country during the week – Mary Immaculate College in Limerick hosted a lecture on Mapping the City, UCD held public lectures on Geographical Information Systems, while NUI Galway hosted a one-day seminar on Planning and Sustainability. ‘Managing the Impacts of Climate Change’ provided the focus of the public lecture held in NUI Maynooth during the week and the AGTI hosted their Gwenda Hurst Lecture in TCD to coincide with GAW. In addition, throughout the week, a number of geography table quizzes and photo competitions took place. All of these events received a positive response and were well attended and supported.

To coincide with the GAW 2012 the GSI commissioned a cartoon titled ‘What is Geography?’ The aim of the educational poster is to address the common misconception that geography is narrowly focussed on knowledge regarding capital cities of the world and facts regarding counties, wine regions and lakes. The poster highlights how geography is about so much more than facts and figures and shows how geography helps us to understand how the world works with geographers exploring different systems such as human, physical, and biological, through space and time. 

Ireland’s first GAW appears to have been well received by those who participated in the events. In addition, GAW received a number of citations in the local and national media as well as on online forums. Over the coming years and with the support of geography teachers around the country, the GSI and the AGTI hope to build on this first Geography Awareness Week and develop a suite of teachers’ resources and create an archive of activities which can be used in the classroom as well as out in the field.