County Down: A Topographical Dictionary of the Parishes, Villages and Towns of County Down in the 1830s

Sixteen years ago the Friar's Bush Press put local historians very much in its debt by publishing a facsimile of George Henry Bassett's County Down guide and directory, 'a book for manufacturers, merchants, traders, land-owners, farmers, tourists, anglers, and sportsmen generally'. This, with its topographical and historical descriptions, its lists of residents and its fascinating advertisements, gives a vivid picture of the high Victorian prosperity of the county in the mid-1880s, at a time when major factories and mills were a feature of the countryside. Now Professor Brian Walker has had the happy idea of extracting from Samuel Lewis's enormous topographical dictionary for the whole of Ireland all those entries relating to County Down, a similar time capsule for a period fifty years earlier, when the rural agricultural community was as yet scarcely touched by industry. This is not a straight photographic reprint: the original has been scanned and reprinted in a much more pleasant and easy to read typeface, and reproduction of contemporary maps and line engravings have been incorporated into what was originally an unillustrated text. Fifteen town plans taken from the 1835 six-inch Ordnance Survey maps have been included at a useful magnification of 140%, and there are delightfully atmospheric views from a number of published sources, mostly of the 1830s.