Mapping, Measurement and Metropolis

This book charts the exceptional impact that a small group of land surveyors had on the development of Dublin city during the 18th century. Written with unique technical insight, the book examines an industry that was simultaneously a mixture of art, science, and business, which left the city with a diverse and vibrant cartographic heritage. The city's practitioners ranged from professionals and artists to frauds and rogues. Dublin's land surveyors dealt with the city's richest lords and its poorest tenants, providing the images onto which some of the most interesting and important stories of 18th-century Dublin are told. Despite these surveyors' relatively small numbers, they played a unique and fundamental role in shaping Dublin into what it is today. *** "Dr. O'Cionnaith is a practicing surveyor in Ireland and in this book, which includes 14 coloured plates and 58 black and white illustrations, and has an illustrated dust jacket showing mainly Brooking's 1728 map of Dublin, he aims to show how 'one of the most profitable and genteel professions' helped shape the city and left a lasting mark on this, one of Europe's most beautiful cityscapes, at an important time in its growth and development. What is a major achievement of this book is the manner in which the author places surveying and mapping in the context of society and the economy of Ireland and Britain. Geomatica, Vol. 67, No. 3, 2013