Rural electrification map, 1946-1965
click here to view map in full screen
Note:
In 1946, approximately 2 million people in over 400,000 rural homes had no electricity connection.
These were mainly homes in the truly rural areas as over 240,000 premises in Irish cities, towns and large villages already had electricity.
Our map shows the 792 ESB rural areas used in the roll out of the first phase of rural electrification in Ireland between 1946 to 1965 only. Any towns and villages connected before 1946 are not featured here. Nor are town lands connected after the end of phase 1 in 1965. Black Valley in Co Kerry, for example, is not included as it was connected in the late 1970s.
For more information relating to the implementation of the scheme, as well as phases of post-development and extension post-1965, click here.
Lovely to see these photo’s, it gives such an insight into how hard my Dad (Malachy Geelan RIP) and his co workers worked bringing light & joy to so many in the community. Makes me very proud.
Interesting to notice that a map of German origin was used, the UK is identified as the VEREINIGTE KÖNIGREICH . Was there no map in English or even Irish or was this a result of the english/ irish trade war ? Maybe an outflow from the Shannon electricity schem ??
Hartmut, here’s a link to a scan of the actual Ordnance Survey map as used by the Rural Electrification office. https://esbarchives.ie/2016/01/22/test-scan-of-rural-map/
This is a fantastic resource, thank you for putting it online.
Brings back memories of installing Group Water Schemes as part of Rural Electrification
Remember the 1st light being switched on in our home ,,, Great Excitement 1954 , Daddy held up my brother to turn the switch .
My father worked on the Shannon scheme. He was so proud of Ardnacrusha and the development of the quiet revolution. He started as a very young man in a local factory that had a turbine and were producing a few kilowatts of electricity for local use. As a young man he was fascinated and thrilled to be a part of “The Board” and that loyalty lasted to the day he died.
HI-I was wondering if there is a data repository that is available for public use? I would like to create a visualization based on the timelines etc, as per the map above, but in Tableau Public- a data visualization platform.
If i could access the data it would be greatly appreciated.
Regards
Greg
Greg, Its still an ongoing project with more to do. We may make the dataset public when we complete consolidation of the data.