Old Map of Ireland in 1846 by Samuel Lewis - Dublin, Cork, River Shannon, Counties & Provinces

Samuel Lewis compiled his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland as a reference work first and an atlas second, but the 1846 edition of that dictionary came with a full set of maps, thirty-two county sheets and one general map of the country, drawn by R. Creighton and engraved by I. Dower to accompany Lewis's parish-by-parish descriptions. This general map of Ireland, showing the whole country at a single scale, is the sheet reproduced here.

Dublin and Cork are marked as the country's two largest cities, connected by the roads and by the early railway lines that had begun spreading out from Dublin in the years since the country's first line opened to Kingstown in 1834. The River Shannon is traced down the centre of the country from its source near Lough Allen to its wide estuary on the west coast, and the map divides Ireland into its four historic provinces, Leinster, Munster, Ulster and Connacht, each further split into the counties that Lewis's dictionary described entry by entry.

Compiled just before famine and mass emigration altered Ireland's population permanently, the map stands as a record of the country's administrative geography in the years immediately before that change, and makes a poignant gift for anyone researching Irish family history ahead of that era. It is reproduced unframed at high resolution in nine sizes.