A pair of handsome reproduction map publications combines to provide a detailed portrait of Co Wicklow and its Victorian spa, Bray, as they were in the mid-19th century.
Both maps are the work of Daniel Edward Heffernan, a civil engineer and surveyor with a Rathmines address during the 1860s, about whom disappointingly little is known - he even escapes mention in the usually comprehensive Boylan's Dictionary of Irish Biography.
These stylish parchment-yellow reproductions show the benefit of the additional sources and information made available through the research undertaken by Mary Davies, author of Bray, the ninth fascicle in the Irish Historic Towns Atlas series (Royal Irish Academy, edited by Anngret Simms, H.B. Clarke & Raymond Gillespie, Dublin, 1999).
Heffernan, we are told, supplied 18 engravings for The Official Railway Hand- book to Bray (1860). He included those engravings on his maps and they also decorate these reproductions, appearing in smaller form on the reverse side with neat pen portrait-like descriptions written by Davies.
In the atmospheric and factual text accompanying County Wicklow in 1861, Davies, formerly cartographic editor of the Irish Historic Towns Atlas, writes:
"Wicklow in the 1860s already had a long-standing reputation as one of the most beautiful parts of Ireland, second only to the lakes of Killarney in the number of visitors it attracted.
"The wild upland scenery, once seen as the gloomy and forbidding home of outlaws and rebels, had become an object of admiration from the 1750s onwards with the birth of the Romantic movement." She also points to the large number of resident gentry and their fine houses. The Wicklow of the 1860s was still an overwhelmingly rural county. Most interestingly of all is the fact that, despite plantings on the large estates, Wicklow was not particularly well-wooded.
One woodland which now exists in name only is the Coronation Plantation on the upper reaches of the River Liffey. Planted by the Marquis of Downshire, landlord of the Blessington area, it commemorated the coronation of King William IV in 1830.
ALSO excellent is Davies's commentary on Bray in 1870 in which she highlights the rapid transformation the town underwent following the opening of the railway line from Dublin in 1854. By 1870, anyone returning after a 16-year absence would not have recognised the place.
There is also the phenomenon of Bray as the forerunner of the modern commuter town.
Lovers of Wicklow in particular and of antique maps in general will no doubt want these maps framed. In that case, buy two copies of each as you will want to consult both sides.
Heffernan's Illustrated Plans of County Wicklow in 1861 and Bray in 1870 are published by Wordwell, at £6.50 folded and £6.90 tubed, from most bookshops. The Bray fascicle by Mary Davies is available from the Royal Irish Academy, Dawson Street, Dublin 2. Price £20.