The distance from the stretch of curving shoreline from Magilligan Point as Lough Foyle opens out to the sea and the village of Ballykelly, positioned inland between Derry and Limavady, is eight miles. As the crow flies, rather than following the road or railway, this short distance is the ‘baseline’ measurement of the original Ordnance Survey of Ireland, established in 1824. From this first diagonal line created and extended across the local landscapes of Lough Foyle, all other Ordnance Survey measurements were triangulated across the island of Ireland and in time, other countries and continents.

Magilligan Point faces across the narrow isthmus of the Lough to Greencastle, a fishing village and current ferry port. The weather-dependent journey takes 10 or 15 minutes, and passengers are crossing the invisible sea border between Europe and the UK. Lough Foyle is the only territorial area still claimed by both countries. In 1824 all of Ireland was part of the British dominion and as was happening across many global colonies, the nineteenth century fascination and drive to classify and catalogue, was part of the impetus to appraise the entire island. Alongside scientific advancement the main rationale was the potential to increase the tax revenue from tenants who would soon be living on lands mapped and measured by military engineers and whose lives, customs and cultures were equally detailed by the OS fieldworkers and memoir-writers. 

From the late Covid months of 2021 to November 2023, a group of volunteers were brought together by Queen’s University Belfast and Binevenagh & Coastal Lowlands Landscape Partnership to create ‘Mapping Monuments’, a community cultural project carrying out fieldwork and local research to uncover traces of the Ordnance Survey in the landscape as part of the OS200 bicentennial of 2024. Initially contributing as a team volunteer, my role developed as the artist in residence within the project, continuing my ongoing artistic research of the militarised landscapes of the north coast since 2017.

Photography and its early history is a touchstone of my arts practice. I use photographic processes and drawing to make connections between the visible and the hidden, revealing signifiers between historical and contemporary life. Although the emergence of a fixed photographic image is dated to 1839, later than the beginnings of the OS, it could be argued that the entire century was an age of photography. The popularity of optical ‘toys’ as products of scientific experimentation – the thaumatrope, phenakistiscope, zootrope, Faraday Wheel – demonstrated just how deeply optically enhanced vision was embedded within the narratives of modernity and exploration. 

Throughout the ‘Mapping Monuments’ project I was drawn to where the research seemed to connect most closely with certain photographic features - a beam of projected light, the act of observation or witness, a shift from the visible to the invisible. I arranged a climb to Sliabh Sneacht with some of the group to visit the site where Thomas Drummond (1797 – 1840) and his team were encamped, the remains of which are still in the landscape. From this summit Colby first projected a beam of limelight as a form of measurement to Colonel Colby (1784 – 1852) on Divis Mountain in Belfast, an incredible 68 miles away in November 1825. From the arduous and experimental process of the light projection itself to the ancient well at the summit, 'Tobar na Suile' (Well of the Eyes) believed to have curative powers for blindness, the parallels with photography were striking. The analogue photographs I made at the summit show the wild weather of that hike, with an intensity and otherwordly quality. Opticality, it seemed, shared a wellspring. 

Later, I travelled to Trinity College Dublin to view the only Memoir published during the life span of the Ordnance Survey, the Memoir of the City and North-West Liberties of Londonderry, Parish of Templemore, published in 1837. Widely acclaimed, it was also both expensive and considered potentially divisive in terms of the meticulous information-gathering and detailing of Irish history. Handling the Memoir, with its intensive detailing of place, people, language and lives, influenced and shaped my ideas around how the research should be presented and the final forms of the artwork. 

I also got permission to spend a day in the Napoleonic Martello Tower at Magilligan Point. Although not directly involved in the OS preparations along the shoreline, the Tower was built around 1812 and the Martello garrison most probably welcomed their company of peers, military engineers and surveyors, little more than a decade after its construction.  The site and positioning of Mount Sandy may have been checked and re-checked from the high vantage point of the Tower, with the indulgence of Mussenden Temple (1785) also in their sights. My few hours were spent making drawings and photographs of the ferry crossing, the Inishowen peninsula and the expanse pf the Atlantic, stretching out towards Scotland. 

Marked on the early OS maps but long since disappeared, Mount Sandy remains as a revenant in folk memory, a trig ‘tower’ marking the northern end of the baseline on the shores of Magilligan. During the field research, it was intriguing to hear local stories and theories about the possible whereabouts of Mount Sandy. In turn, trying to orientate myself in order to evoke a sense of this absent/present form, these stories flitted in and out as much more recent military ordnance became visible at low tide and across the strand.

During the summer of 2023 I began gathering the research together - sketchbook and frottage drawings, film negatives for printing up in the darkroom, bog cotton, turf and wool collected from Slieve Sneacht for making cyanotypes, digital images and video footage - in preparation for producing a unique, printed photo-book and a short film, collectively titled BASE. When my editing was complete and the work of the designer and bookbinder was finished, BASE was ready as part for the 'Mapping Monuments' exhibition and launch at the Drummond Hotel in Ballykelly in November 2023. During the bicentennial year of 2024 the project has toured to the Roe Valley Arts & Cultural Centre, Limavady and the Armagh County Museum. The 'Mapping Monuments' project and BASE will be on exhibition and open to the public in PRONI, (Public Records Office of Northern Ireland) Belfast from 21 November 2024 to 6 January 2025.

There is an interesting contemporary postscript to the institution and operations of the actual Ordnance Survey Ireland. One of the institutions 'inherited' after Irish independence in 1922, together with the police and the defence forces, both of which were renamed, respectively, Garda Siochána and Óglaigh na hÉireann, the organisation Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi) continued until 2023. However, before any potential bicentennial commemorations and taking place quietly on 1 March 2023, Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi) was dissolved. 

A new state agency incorporating the Property Registration Authority (PRA) the Valuation Office and Ordnance Survey Ireland came into effect on the same date. The name of this new government department is Tailte Éireann, which translates as ‘Irish Lands’. Decolonisation, it seemed, has come of age.

Artist in Residence programme and BASE kindly supported by Queen’s University Belfast and Binevenagh & Coastal Lowlands Landscape Partnership.