Barrack-Building, Mapping, and Settlement in Eighteenth-Century Ireland

The history of residential army barracks in Ireland has in recent years become a focus for more concerted study. 1 While a number of works focused upon individual barracks have been published over the years since the 1970s, 2 the first substantive consideration as to why a permanent country-wide network of barracks was built in Ireland in the late 1690s and early eighteenth century was first published in 2012. This work assessed why these barracks were built, how they were paid for, and ultimately what purposes they served. 3 Since then, additional work has been undertaken with regard to a more comprehensive identification and inventorying of over 360 such barracks built between 1690 and 1922. 4 However, while some consideration has been given to the impact of the building of a country-wide network of barracks upon cartographic practice, 5 there has been little to no assessment of the impact that such residential army barracks had upon patterns of settlement. It is the aim of this article to assess these interlinked elements of barrack-building, mapping, and settlement patterns in relation to each other in an eighteenth-century context, with a particular focus upon barracks built in County Armagh. 6