How to date Griffith’s Valuation precisely

Griffith’s Valuation is an astounding achievement, a masterpiece of Victorian social quantification that measures every property on the island of Ireland with painstaking, pinpoint precision. But it is not a census, and to use it as a census substitute, you have to understand how it works.

Sir Richard Griffith in 1854

Griffith was charged with producing a scientific basis for property taxation in Ireland, and that is exactly what he did. Every building and every field in the country was assessed in meticulous detail to produce a monetary figure that represented the income that property should produce every year. The results were published between 1847 and 1864 in a series of 301 volumes.

These volumes were a public statement of the property tax liabilities of the inhabitants of the areas they cover, and were open to challenge. So accuracy was paramount. And part of this accuracy was precision about the date of publication – property, then as now, was a moving target.

For researchers, those precise dates of publication can be very important: if your William Burke was in Boston in March 1856, that can’t be him in Castlebar on January 26th 1857.

Title page of the Griffith’s volume for Castlebar Poor Law Union

So how do you get that precise date? Every volume has the date on its title page. And you can get to the title page by going through Askaboutireland.

Run a search (e.g. http://goo.gl/JFSkd8 ), then open up a page image in a new tab or browser window. If you want, you can then just click the “previous page” link until you get to the volume title page.

But each volume can have up to 500 pages, making that process mind-numbingly tedious. Here’s a shortcut: in the browser address bar, you’ll see something like “griffiths.askaboutireland.ie/gv4/z/zoomifyDynamicViewer.php?file=210173[…]”

Griffith’s browser address bar

The”file” in that address is made up of two parts, a three-digit volume number and a three-digit page number. The example above therefore refers to volume 210, page 173. If you want to go to page 1 of volume 210, just change that 173 to 001 in the address bar, hit “enter” and there you are. The precise publication date is usually about two-thirds down on the left. In the example, it’s January 26th 1857.

Et voila.

[This post was originally published in March 2016, but got washed away in the Great Delete of June 2016. It's useful enough to republish, I think]

29 thoughts on “How to date Griffith’s Valuation precisely”

  1. When I go to display the image, I get a message saying that I don’t support the plug in. I am not sure what to do next. Any suggestions? Can’t wait to get the date on these images!

  2. Another, incredibly useful piece of info. When you’re faced – as so many of us are – with the proverbial ‘brick walls’, anything that might help with that, is well received!

  3. I would suspect that there is some lag time between the valuation and its publication. Elaines link has County Cork being done 1851 – 1852. The Barony of West Carbery was published in 1853.

  4. Question about Griffiths – a couple entries in my ancestor’s townland list a Felix (Arthur) and a Felix (Patrick). Should I take this to mean Felix son of Arthur and Felix son of Patrick? Thanks

    1. Yes indeed. Griffith’s sometimes uses fathers’ forenames to distinguish between two individuals of the same name in the same townland.

  5. I’d like to know if your tip on accessing the title page of the printed Griffith’s Valuation by manipulating the browser on AskaboutIreland could be applied to the National Archives site featuring the 1,366,275 Valuation Office records i.e. the notebooks used by the VO’s army of valuers and surveyors from 1824.
    If I am not mistaken this site does not even have a ”previous page”/”next page” link for these recently released records and does not allow mind-numbing tedious exercises in going to and fro.

  6. Or you could just get a subscription to Findmypast where all the information is presented in the index. Et voila, half an hour saved each time you want to check a date.

  7. On the immediate lessors column, I have seen listings like Reps. John Hayes. I would like to know what the Reps. means.

    1. It stands for “Representatives of”, meaning “legal representatives of”. In most cases this is because the individual has died and the estate hasn’t cleared probate, but there are other possible circumstances: a minor, a bankrupt, someone adjudged not mentally comepetent …

  8. Great discussion, but I’d really rather turn off the updates sent to my email. How can I do that?

  9. Thank you for this valuable tip! I found the publication date for where my ancestors lived but I have a question: What might have been the lag time between when then valuation was done and when it was published. Was it a few months or many months to a year? The publication date for my ancestors area is 1858. They moved from that area sometime in 1857-1858. Knowing the lag time might help me narrow down when them might have left.

    1. This is a great tip, thank you.

      I too am interested in the time lag. I have an ancestor who shows in the GV in 1853 but I suspect he died in 1849. Is four years too long to be a lag between the valuation and the publication of such?

  10. Hi – There was a time lag in recording information. Griffith’s has my great great grandfather (named spelled wrong) and his father in law on lot number 19 a and b. Date of the book is 1854. In November 1853 he leased additional acres (from FMP Landed Estate Rentals) and that’s probably when they changed the numbers of some of the lots (Ask About Ireland has the map with the changes marked). Not sure when, but by 1855 he had leased 5 more acres. I’ve also obtained copies of the Canceled books and the time lag, or the requirement to provide accurate information is way off. I know a lot about this family because they lived in the townland until the 1980s. The father in law is listed in the records until 1875!! I couldn’t find a death cert for him, eventual found a probate record – he died in March 1859.

  11. Well, I just came across this discussion about Griffith valuations. What is the significance of this for those who had ancestors from Ireland, and have the Griffith name as part of the that DNA lineage? Could I bother someone to tell me in a nutshell what is this about?
    Mary H

  12. Searching Griffith’s Valuation and maps – the valuation gives a number and letter per dwelling but when I look on the maps, while I can find the number, there doesn’t seem to be a corresponding letter within that particular part of the map. Is there any way to see where each dwelling as as per letter ? Thanks

    1. If there aren’t letters on the map, it [probably] means the dwellings were no longer there when the map was done. You have to remember there’s at least a twenty-year gap between the published Valuation and the online maps.
      There may be earlier maps still in the Valuation Office itself.

  13. I’m just curious as to whether anyone else is having issues with displaying the Griffith’s tenant maps in AakAboutIreland.ie (as of Aug-Sept 2022) – a couple of years ago I managed to get the Web Admin to update the site’s sec. cert. after a similar issue was occurring and lo and behold all worked again but as of the last 2 months I cannot get the current map images to display . Site page simply tries to load a page (selecting the large magnifying glass icon but same prob with other links), and after some time the controls appear but no map image – massively frustrating. Have chatted with Libraries Ireland staff and no solution provided after 2 weeks of back and forth (apparently the site is under review). Have done all the usual stuff re flushing cache, rebooting modems and routers etc etc. – no solution – even tied via my T-Mobile phone network and same problem!

    Apologies long diatribe but really need to get this resolved (apparently the maps do display when user accessed from within Ireland i.e. I am wondering if specific international traffic servers are the issue – I am based in Houston Tx right now – but again no idea.
    Any help/known solution would be hugely appreciated!

    1. From what I gather the map function was created in flash format ( a now defunct web standard that was removed back in 2021 and support for it was gradually being removed). I presume this is the likely reason. One of the great features of the internet is ability to be seen by more people, one of the drawbacks is that webs standards change and some previous media can be prevented from viewing properly.

  14. I’m experiencing exactly the same problem in the UK, and have done so for the past couple of years, although it all worked fine up until then.

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