The historical records in question relate to the tenant lists (rent rolls) for Coolattin, a major landed estate in Wicklow belonging to Earl Fitzwilliam, in the mid 19th century. The National Library has the estate papers, which include bound volumes of beautiful estate maps by townland, each with a list of tenants and the size of their landholdings. The Fitzwilliam Estate also ran an assisted emigration programme paying the fare for tenants on unproductive land to move to Canada. Initial research has brough these historical records to the public via https://coolattinlives.ie
The technical challenge in this research project is to go beyond this basic website by: exploring and choosing the best way to align the geospatial data with the authoritative source for geospatial places in the VRTI (https://virtualtreasury.ie); to explore and choose the best way to mine the data to extract trends about the tenant families (e.g. emigration to Canada); and to explore and choose the best way to visualise the trend data in an interactive and engaging manner for the general public.
This project is suitable as a Final Year Project or MSc Dissertation project, with the challenge scope and ambition being tailored accordingly. The research will be undertaken in collaboratiion with an expert on the data from the School of History.