Valuation Records

By 1824, Parliament recognized the need for a more equitable method of measuring liability for cess and rates.  The 1st Valuation Act was introduced in 1826 and a valuation of the whole of Ireland was prepared.   The original purpose was, and remains, the assessment of every building and every piece of land and estimating its financial value.  The valuation is, in theory, the amount the owner would expect to receive if he hired out his property for one year.  The valuation of a property is subsequently used in assessing the rates to be paid.

 The townland valuation of the 1830s

Though often dismissed as being of fairly limited genealogical value, the townland valuation carried out in the 1830s can be an important source for those searching for their ancestors, particularly if those ancestors were urban dwellers. 

The bound manuscript returns are arranged by barony and parish.  Those for Northern Ireland are available at PRONI under the reference VAL/1B; the accompanying annotated maps are listed under VAL/1A and VAL/1D.

The first general valuation (Griffth), 1848-64

The contrast, the 1848-64 valuation gives a complete list of occupiers of land, tenements and houses.  This Primary Valuation of Ireland, better known as Griffith was to determine the amount of tax, or rates, each person should pay towards the support of the poor and destitute within each poor law union.  The value of all privately held lands and buildings in both rural and urban areas was determined according to the rate at which each property could be rented year after year.  The tax was fixed at about 6% (with variations), for every pound of the rent value, is arranged by county, within counties by Poor Law Union division, and within Unions by parish.  It includes the following information:  the name of the townland; the name of the householder or leaseholder; the name of the person from whom the property was leased; a description of the property; its acreage; and finally the valuation of the land and buildings. 

The published version of Griffith’s valuation was based on the valuers’ notebooks.  It did not, however, include all the information provided by the notebook, and some entries in the later published version have been updated. 

Griffith’s Valuation is of particular interest to anyone wishing to trace their family tree, due to the fact that so little of the nineteenth century census returns has survived.  It is especially important for identifying emigrants as to this precise place of origin during this period.  Emigration statistics point to the fact that a large proportion of the mass emigration that took place was a result of the Great Famine of 1845-51, did not occur until after 1855 by which time the valuation was largely complete for the south and west of the county. 

The National Archives holds the original Valuation surveyors notebooks for the twenty-six counties of the Republic of Ireland and PRONI those for Northern Ireland. 

An index to Griffith’s Valuation for all of Ireland is available on CD-ROM from Heritage World in Donaghmore.  A CD-ROM set comprising page scans of the printed Griffith’s Valuation has also been produced by Irish Microfilms Media Ltd in Dublin.