Phase 1

Identification of woods present since 1830

The first step was to identify woodland areas that could, potentially, be ancient or long-established.

Three sets of maps were used:

• The First Edition 6” to the mile Ordnance Survey maps (1830-44)
• The most recent 1:10,000 mapping (mainly from the 1960s and 70s)
• An intermediate series (mainly dating from around the 1900s).

The boundaries of wooded areas (including scrub, wood pasture and parkland) common to all three series were digitised using a Geographical Information System (GIS), where shown on the most recent maps as being over 0.5 hectares, or part of larger, continuous areas totalling more than 0.5 hectares.

The result was a preliminary dataset of 2,617 areas of woodland dating back at least 170 years, some of which could be ancient. This is the basis on which the inventory is founded.

This first phase was carried out by Queen’s University Belfast (School of Geography) under a one-year contract.