This new historical atlas explores the town of Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal from its origins to the present day. It traces the towns development from a fording point and ODonnell stronghold, through its nineteenth-century heyday as a thriving port and market town with international trading connections, into the twenty-first century. The volume includes large-format reproductions of historic maps, views and photographs from the late sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, as well as specially created thematic maps. A gazetteer of over 680 sites and an accompanying essay provide a detailed topographical history of the town up to c. 1900.
The Irish Historic Towns Atlas is a long-term research programme of the Royal Irish Academy. Since publication began in 1986, thirty-two atlases of Irish towns and cities, north and south, have been published. The atlases are produced following basic principles, making it possible to compare and contrast places with one another. Ballyshannon now joins the north-western town of Sligo and city of Derry, as well as over 600 European towns and cities produced as part of a wider International scheme. See www.ihta.ie for more information.
Irish Historic Towns Atlas, no. 32, Ballyshannon/Béal Átha Seanaidh, by Angela Byrne is published by the Royal Irish Academy and has been supported by Donegal County Council and The Heritage Council as part of the implementation of the County Donegal Heritage Plan. Maps produced in association with Tailte Éireann.
Dr Angela Byrne is a Donegal native and a historian of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She works at the Dictionary of Irish Biography and was previously editorial assistant with the Irish Historic Towns Atlas. A graduate of NUI Maynooth (Ph.D., 2009), she has held research and lecturing positions at the universities of Toronto, Greenwich, Ulster and Maynooth, and at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum. She has published widely and curated exhibitions on Donegal local history, the history of travel and exploration, womens history, and the Irish diaspora. She has held research fellowships across Europe and North America and has presented her research to audiences worldwide. Her books include Anarchy and Authority: Irish Encounters with Romanov Russia (Lilliput Press, 2024), John (Fiott) Lee in Ireland, England and Wales, 18067 (Routledge, 2018) and Geographies of the Romantic North (Palgrave, 2013), and she co-edited All Strangers Here: 100 Years of Personal Writing from the Irish Foreign Service (Arlen House, 2021). She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a former NUI Travelling Scholar and former Marie Curie Co-Fund postdoctoral fellow.
