Irelands Valuation office conducted it's first survey of property ownership in Ireland from 1848 to 1864.The surveyors started this enormous task in the very south of the country so the valuations for Cork or Waterford date from 1848 while the Province of Ulster was last to be valued between 1858 and 1864
This survey became known as "Griffiths Valuation" from Sir Richard Griffith who was the director of the Valuation Office at that time. The survey was used to determine the amount of tax each person should pay towards the support of the poor within their Poor Law Union. This involved determining the value of all privately held lands and buildings in rural as well as urban areas to figure the rate at which each unit of property could be rented year after year.
The resulting survey was arranged by barony and civil parish with an index to the townlands appearing in each volume.
Griffith's Valuation can be used as an excellent census substitute for the years after the Great Famine as censi prior to that of 1901 were in the main destroyed in the early part of the 20th century.
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