As usual, I can’t quite remember how it started, but this week, I was trying to find a list of all the National Monuments of Ireland. The National Monuments Service publishes lists by county which only contain the ones under state care. These lists have made their way to Wikipedia which is a great start. They have their numbers recorded there which I have transferred to OSM under ref:IE:nm for the counties of Kilkenny, Laois and Offaly so far. (the key is recorded on the wiki, of course.)
I have sent an email to the National Monuments Service asking for a list, but so far, no reply. I probably have a reputation there by now…
However, I noticed while visiting and taking some pictures of Freshford Church that it has a black plaque (the type of which I had seen before, but never read in much detail) which stated that it was a National Monument.
I have not been able to figure out what the numbers mean; but there are two buildings (both early modern townhouses) in Kilkenny with the same second number, so I’m presuming it is a category.
I remembered seeing more of these signs in Kilkenny. According to the official list, there are only 3 National Monuments in the City of Kilkenny, but using these plaques, I have already identified 4 more which I have added to the list on Wikipedia. I would not be surprised if Kilkenny turned out to be the town with the highest density of National Monuments, but I can only run that overpass-turbo query, once I have the numbers to add to the key ref:IE:nm.
For now, this is the state of recorded monuments: overpass
In the long run, it would really help if other people photographed these plaques and uploaded them to WikiCommons, so we have the ground truth. And eventually, we might even figure out the numbers from those plaques.
Counties transferred from Wikipedia to OSM (I’ll edit the list as I go along):
- Carlow
- Cavan
- Clare
- Cork
- Donegal
- Dublin
- Galway
- Kerry
- Kildare
- Kilkenny
- Laois
- Leitrim
- Limerick
- Longford
- Louth
- Mayo
- Meath
- Monaghan
- Offaly
- Roscommon
- Sligo
- Tipperary
- Waterford
- Westmeath
- Wexford
- Wicklow
(Shrine of St Lachtain’s arm in the National Museum)