Nearly 200,000 historical Irish records released online

A significant trove of historical documents, numbering nearly 200,000, has been made accessible online, offering an unprecedented window into seven centuries of Irish history. The Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland (VRTI) launched this release, a project dedicated to digitally reconstructing the nation's public records that were tragically destroyed in the Four Courts bombardment of Dublin in 1922.

This latest release brings the total number of permanently available documents on virtualtreasury.ie to over half a million. The VRTI's mission is to digitally recreate the Public Record Office of Ireland, a vast repository that once housed centuries of administrative and personal records. Ciarán Wallace, Historian and Director of the VRTI, described the original office as a six-storey building containing records dating back to the Norman invasion.

"There were census records, there was taxation records, law and order, how people bumped up against the state, all the land ownership," Wallace explained on RTÉ's Morning Ireland. "Imagine all those Cromwellian land settlements that all happened, settlements, seizures. Basically, how the English state ran Ireland, all those papers gathered into one safe place, which then turned out to be the most unsafe place on 30 June 1922."

The Four Courts complex, where the record office was located, was occupied by anti-treaty forces before being assaulted by the Free State Army. The ensuing fire caused a massive explosion, scattering records across Dublin. While a few documents survived in a safe, the newly released materials were meticulously compiled from copies made before the destruction. These copies, preserved globally, are now being traced and digitized by the VRTI, providing invaluable resources for legal cases, local and family history research.

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There were census records, there was taxation records, law and order, how people bumped up against the state, all the land ownership. Imagine all those Cromwellian land settlements that all happened, settlements, seizures. Basically, how the English state ran Ireland, all those papers gathered into one safe place, which then turned out to be the most unsafe place on 30 June 1922.