1835 Hall Map of Ireland

This is a beautiful map of Ireland from Sidney Hall's extremely scarce 1835 New General Atlas. It depicts the entire Emerald Isle including Northern Ireland, divided into 32 counties. It covers from Donegal in the north to Cork in the south. Towns, rivers, mountains, railroads, and various other important topographical details are noted. Elevation throughout is rendered by hachure and political and territorial boundaries are outlined in color. It also names the four ancient provinces of Leister, Ulster, Munster, and Connaught. Tuscar Rock near the southeast coast of Ireland, known to have destroyed more ships than any other Irish coastal feature, is identified. After the Norman Invasion the old provincial structure was supplemented with modern system of counties - even so the old provinces are still referenced today. In 1801, the island of Ireland became part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Though Britain flourished during the 19th century, Ireland suffered a series of famines, the worst being the Great Irish Famine, which lasted from 1845 - 1849 and killed about a million people. As a result Ireland experienced a widespread exodus - mostly to the United States. By the end of the 19th century, almost 50% of immigrants into the United States hailed from Ireland.

Sidney Hall's New General Atlas was published from 1830 to 1857, the first edition being the most common, with all subsequent editions appearing only rarely. Most of the maps included in the first edition of this atlas were drawn between 1827 and 1828 and are most likely steel plate engravings, making it among the first cartographic work to employ this technique. Each of the maps in this large and impressive atlas feature elegant engraving and an elaborate keyboard style border. Though this is hardly the first map to employ this type of border, it is possibly the earliest to use it on such a large scale. Both the choice to use steel plate engraving and the addition of the attractive keyboard boarder are evolutions of anti-forgery efforts. Copper plates, which were commonly used for printing bank notes in the early 19th century, proved largely unsuitable due to their overall fragility and the ease with which they could be duplicated. In 1819 the Bank of England introduced a £20,000 prize for anyone who could devise a means to print unforgeable notes. The American inventors Jacob Perkins and Asa Spencer responded to the call. Perkins discovered a process for economically softening and engraving steel plates while Spencer invented an engraving lathe capable of producing complex patters repetitively - such as this keyboard border. Though Perkins and Spenser did not win the prize, their steel plate engraving technique was quickly adopted by map publishers in England, who immediately recognized its value. Among early steel plate cartographic productions, this atlas, published in 1830 by Longman Rees, Orme, Brown & Green stands out as perhaps the finest. This map was issued by Sidney Hall and published by Longman Rees, Orme, Brown & Green of Paternoster Row, London, in the 1835 edition of the Sidney Hall New General Atlas.