New map of Belfast protestant/catholic populations.

Well not really.. Its just a teaser for what will be. What is new is that what you are looking at are the outlines of new Belfast. All that I've read so far is that these new divsions will give a nationalist majority in the council  chambers. Time will tell.

Irish Cheeses

Here's a new years resolution: Eat all of these. I don't know if the colourings have any significance and I don't know if the fact that N Ireland and Dublin are both highlighted but have no chesse named means anything. List of cheeses named are : Beenoskoe, Milleeris, Desmond Gubbeen, Durrus, Coolea, Ardrahan, Baylough Cheddar, St Gall, Ardsallagh, Cashel Blue, Crozier Blue, Cooleeney, Lavistown, Knockdrinna Gold, St Tola Log, Mount Callan, Mossfield Organic, Grace, Glebe Brethan, Bellingham Blue, Corleggy. I have heard of only one of these before "cashel Blue". St Tola Log sounds like something i'll have to try! 

 Source Maps taken from the World Cheese Book, by Juliet Harbutt, published by DK Via http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2009/10/map_of_the_week_cheese.html

Twitter geolocation tags mapped onto Irish roads to show volume of traffic.

Got this from the guardian. It does as it says. Its not a map of where people are using twitter but rather of where twitter is used the most when on the road system. Cant see anything of real interest for Irish people only that the busiest road on the Island would appear to the boat leaving Belfast for Scotland! Or though you could argue that people have more time for tweeting on the ferry. The M7/M8 to cork has a blank spot somewhere after Newbridge with everyone turning off the road to cork to go to Carlow. thus Portlaoise to Clonmel is pretty vacant. 

Irish civil war in 1922. Division of the island into republican and free-state areas.

So Dongeal Clare, Laois, Westmeath, Meath, Cavan, Monaghan and parts of other counties were Free-State territories. This is I did not know. To be honest im quite surprised by the amount of territory that the Republicans had. I assumed it was more heavy towards the Free-Staters. I can not remember where i found this map.

Clans and their hereditary links at the time of Henry 8th

I really have no clue what to say here other than click on it and have fun. This is supposedly based on the castles of the various clans around the country. With the colours linked to the origin of the clan. 

Percentage of Catholics in Ireland and Northern Ireland 1926

Don't know the origin of this map saw it on Politics.ie. I'm the process of creating a series of maps using a 1% grading for the religious make up of the island with a 32 county template. The 20% grade used here is somewhat frustrating but the reality is that the percentage of protestants in the Republic was never over 10% (at least after partition) so any maps used to represent this data need a very small grade but that means a lot more shades of colours are needed which is painful to produce.

Squirrels in Ireland

My american friends are always amazed at the delight i express if i see a squirrel in Ireland; squirrels being the most plentiful and visible animal in the US. Some of you will know that there is a bit of a squirrel war going on in Ireland (and Britian I think) at the moment between those who wish to see the native Red Squirrel survive and the new arrival - The grey. My advice? Catch Kill and Eat the grey. Apparently they're tasty. 

Bees in Ireland

Judging by this it would appear that Beekeeping is mostly a leinster and Munster thing. Unless of course there is separate Northern Ireland Association? 

Railways currently (2013) and at their height (1906)

As one can see the area's around Cork and Northern Ireland are the most covered. My time in the North has had me seeing a significantly increased presence of people with an interest in trains. - no wonder. I don't know the real reasons why the railways are not as extensive as they were but I'm assuming that partition of the island was not helpful! Currently as with the roads all trains in the Republic lead to Dublin. Only one intercity route exists (has it opened yet?) that does not go to Dublin and that is the Waterford to Limerick route. Sometimes in my daydreams I imagine a world where tunnelboring technology has developed to the stage where its quick and commonplace so that one could put all roads and trains underground. Every city would have a direct line to all the other ones.. Would be cool yeah?

New Northern Ireland Councils

Middle map shows the old system.  Below is the wikipedia summary of the changes. I'm guessing that fear politics are behind the fact that belfast is not taking in parts of "natural belfast" such as forestside.

1.	Belfast City		Belfast City Council plus parts of Castlereagh, Lisburn and North Down
2.	North Down and Ards District	102,313	Ards and North Down, except for a small part of the Knocknagoney area of North Down District which was to be transferred to Belfast
3.	Antrim and Newtownabbey District	120,496	Antrim and Newtownabbey
4.	Lisburn City and Castlereagh District	83,369	Lisburn and Castlereagh, though with the transfer of "the localities of Gilnahirk, Tullycarnet, Braniel, Castlereagh, Merok, Cregagh, Wynchurch, Glencregagh and Belvoir, Collin Glen, Poleglass, Lagmore, Twinbrook, Kilwee and Dunmurry" to Belfast
5.	Newry City, Mourne and Down District	107,233	Newry and Mourne and Down together with half of Slieve Croob
6.	Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon District	124,996	Armagh City and District, Banbridge and Craigavon, though with the loss of half of Slieve Croob to Newry City and Down District
7.	Mid and East Antrim District	89,832	Ballymena, Larne, and Carrickfergus
8.	Causeway Coast and Glens District	88,654	Ballymoney, Coleraine, Limavady and Moyle
9.	Mid-Ulster District	86,591	Magherafelt, Cookstown and Dungannon and South Tyrone
10.	Derry City and Strabane District	92,593	Derry and Strabane.
11.	Fermanagh and Omagh District	74,414	Fermanagh and Omagh

N.Ireland Protestant Catholic Other demographics and Nationality results from Census 2011

These are some of the best maps that ive found on the subject at hand. I'll put any other good ones i find up here as well.  The biggest news for me has been the emergence of a "northern Irish" identity. Whatever else this might mean i think its actually good news for unionists as a northern Irish identity is essentially an identity that is ok with the current constitutional situation. On that I think that the current protests by loyalists actually feed into this identity.. underneath the anger against the loyalists is a recognition that republicans have stirred the shit here on this issue..those who have been pushed away from loyalists by their recent actions have also been pushed away from republicans who (all though staying quiet currently) have been tarnished by this aswell because their actions started this off..(not to mention the naming a playground after an IRA guy)  The alliance are going to do well out of all of this which is ironically a good thing for unionists/loyalists cause a vote for alliance is ultimately a vote for the union (or independence I guess). Unionists and loyalist will just have to start to learn how to live where they are a minority.

King Billy in Ireland

Not the best one i've found... Basically he starts in the north in 1689 and works his down to Kinsale for the last battle in 1690. Orange Order made this map in conjunction with the creation of a tourist venture whereby people can follow the "williamite trail". Original can be found here : http://www.grandorangelodge.co.uk/nomadic.pdf 

Hurling Regions

so only 3 counties - Waterford, Killkenny and Tipperary are totally in the hurling zone. Im told that there are football only parts of Tipperary though.  One might be surprised to see that cork seems to have a smaller area of hurling land compared to its success but you should know that the shaded area includes the city which  has a lot of teams for a realtively small area.

Offally was not a hurling county until the late 1970's . The GAA conducted an experiment/program to help a non-traditional county upgrade its hurling. The result was that offally won 4 all -ireland since and   took 9 leinsters. Not bad going. I'd love to find out more about this program. Perhaps a specialist out there could get a book out of it??

There a few counties that have small hold outs. Kerry, Carlow (all though in fairness Carlow is small enough that this area takes up about a 1/4 of the county!) Antrim and Down. Roscommon also appears shaded here but i dont know if that's accurate or just the way it was drawn.

Im not sure what qualifies as true hurling country; I know that some of the shaded areas have great football teams and likewise there are great hurling teams from outside the area aswell. All of the cities undshaded- Galway, Dublin and Belfast all have big hurling teams.

See anything else?

Potato Famine of the 1840's

The only thing i want to note is that the north was a linen centre and as such didn't rely on the spud for food. The areas which really suffered were the ones that did so. 

See anything else?

Protestant Catholic percentage of Population 1766

Taken from Qub Antropology department.

Can't figure out the difference between the red dot for 100% catholic and the red dot for just under 80% protestant...

See anything?

Alternative Histories...

From here http://mangafreak4.deviantart.com/art/Map-of-Ireland-Scotland-312526714

and sure why not?!

Garvaghy Road Orange Order Route

For the day that's in it. 

Orange Order lodges in Northern Ireland

Taken from Sneps.com

Don't have any figures for the counties but it would seem from looking at this that Armagh has the highest concentration. There are 44 lodges in the Republic (see earlier post for map) which means there are about 1350 lodges represented on this map.  The OO is divided into 12 counties- the six traditional northern ones (derry is londonderry of course) plus the city of Londonderry and city of belfast plus 4 border counties - Cavan, Donegal, Leitrim, Monaghan.  These 12 counties are split in districts of which there are 126. A map of them i would like to get.  Each county has a county lodge and each district has a district lodge and then there's the ordinary lodges. If any of that is wrong please let me know.

See anything else?

Golf courses in Ireland

Ok so once i was told that there are over 400 golf course in Ireland. Did that include the north ? According to this map there is about 75 in the north. The listings for Ireland start at 42 so I'm sure we are missing some particularly in the Dublin area but id guess the total is under 300 (according to this Map)

See anything else?

Bogs in Ireland

I lived a few km away from a  bog (raised or blanket i can't be sure but i think it was a blanket one) and its not on here so how much you can trust it ... I got this from an article which was basically attacking Bord Na Mona for stripping bogs of turf for fuel for power stations. I thought BnM made bags of peat moss! Just shows you never get finished of learning about your own country.

See anything else?