Maps of Irish rivers online

gaiscioch

I'd like to find where a river flows through an area (a Google Streetview for rivers would be fantastic). Specifically, at the moment I'm looking for the path of the "Skane River" through Meath. A Google search is not helpful. I'd like to do the same for the Tolka and other rivers.

Would anybody be able to point me in the right direction?

homer simpson

Google maps, the Skane joins the Boyne near Ballinter and seems to start near Drumlee / Dunsaughlin.

Open street maps is brilliant for those things usually but its not on there yet, just needs someone to plot it

El Siglo

Download Google Earth. People are even using the data for research purposes.

gaiscioch

homer simpson wrote: »

Google maps, the Skane joins the Boyne near Ballinter and seems to start near Drumlee / Dunsaughlin.

Open street maps is brilliant for those things usually but its not on there yet, just needs someone to plot it

El Siglo wrote: »

Download Google Earth. People are even using the data for research purposes.

Excellent. According to Google Maps the Skane starts behind Gilsenan's pub in Drumree. I don't know how I missed that on Google Maps. I've been to where it joins the Boyne (at Dalgan Park) and never knew of the river's existence until I did that Dalgan walk. After that I was sure the Skane was the river which flew rapidly down the hill at Clavinstown Mill near Killeen Castle, but the Skane goes the other side of the road behind Dunsany Castle, so I'm not sure where the Clavinstown waterfall is coming from (it isn't even showing on that map). I notice, though, that most of the rural rivers that can be seen via Google Maps are not named. For instance, at "Grangeend Common" in Dunshaughlin there's a river, but it's not named. If you follow that river it goes on through Ratoath and then in Ashbourne it branches off to join the larger, and named, Broadmeadow River.

Googling this issue last week I came across somebody who lives in Bellinter near the Skane River who has a bridge outside her house but no river underneath it. She researched it and between 1814 and 1836 they moved the river leaving behind the old footbridge: story here. So, it would be also good to be able to use technology to identify former courses of rivers - this, for instance, could help historians identify former river trade routes and make sense of documentary evidence that doesn't correspond with the modern rivers.

It would be fantastic if we could surf along rivers - Google Riverview - just as we can surf with Google Streetview along streets and roads now.

slowburner

Have you tried using the OSI maps? You can toggle between the first edition mapping (1839 -1841) second edition (1860ish) and a host of aerial images.
This link should bring you to Clavinstown mill via the street map and the watercourses above the mill seem to be clearly mapped.
http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V1,694287,754132,6,3

gaiscioch

slowburner wrote: »

Have you tried using the OSI maps? You can toggle between the first edition mapping (1839 -1841) second edition (1860ish) and a host of aerial images.
This link should bring you to Clavinstown mill via the street map and the watercourses above the mill seem to be clearly mapped.
http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V1,694287,754132,6,3

That's a class resource. Brilliant find. It still doesn't show the name of the river that goes through Clavinstown mill. The river around the mill goes in a harp shape, and at the top of the hill curiously seems to come from nowhere rather than link to the river some 300m away. It does show up loads of other rivers around that I hadn't known about, and it does name more rivers than the Google Maps version (e.g. a name on one of the rivers between Dunshaughlin and Ashbourne is the Hurley river).