Griffith's Valuation

Origins.net and the genealogy publishing group Eneclann Ltd, in association with the National Library of Ireland, is to make the complete Griffith's Valuation of Ireland available on the world-wide web.  This monumental 19th century work is a primary source of information for family history researchers, and is used as an invaluable substitute for the Irish censuses which were destroyed when the Public Record Office was burned down in 1922. 

The new web service, to be launched early next year, will be the definitive resource for Griffith's Valuation.  All available copies of the Valuation which was published in several versions at different times between 1847 and 1864, will be indexed and digital images of the source publications made available on the web site. The selection of the original documents has been made with the assistance of George Handran, a world expert on Griffith's work.

Griffith's Valuation

Between 1847 and 1864 the Valuation Office, under the direction of Richard Griffith, carried out the first systematic valuation of property holdings in Ireland.  It contained information concerning over one million people, from the smallest farmer to the largest landlord.   

Because most of the census records for the nineteenth century were destroyed in 1922, when the Public Records Office was burned down, the Griffith Valuation represents the most comprehensive survey of households available for the period. For this reason, it is a principal tool of genealogists and local historians.  

Unlike previous attempts to index or publish Griffith's Valuation, this will be the first time the entire survey has been published since it was originally issued in the 19th century. This edition will contain all the revisions and amended versions that were published over the 17 years it took to complete the valuation. No library in any country in the world, including Ireland, has a full set of the Griffith Valuation. So for the first time users of the new web edition can be sure that they have all the source material at hand in one place. They will be able to search a complete database of personal and place names, and then access scanned images of the original published pages.

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