Index HOME Introduction Map of Irish Counties Links E-Mail

I would like to acknowledge the indispensable assistance which I have received from the Ordnance Survey maps. I hope the Ordnance Survey Office of Ireland don't mind me reproducing this map of the national grid below. I love maps and over the years I have bought practically every road map the OS have produced, including all 89 of the 1:50,000 Discovery Series which I cherish and protect. As well as that I have spent a small fortune on the six-inch-to-a-mile sheets corresponding to a wide sweep of my home area. I would strongly encourage every Irish visitor to this site to purchase a copy of the Discovery Series map of your area. It shows detail down to every farm entrance. Each of these maps costs about €6.60 and are available at most newsagents.

Click here for a list of places to visit
Go back to the very first page
Introduction and contact information
Map of 32 Counties of Ireland
Links to related sites
This is an indirect link to your mailing program



Ordnance Survey Grid References

The Grid Reference numbers I am using in these pages follow the OS grid of Ireland as shown on the left.

The country is divided into 25 squares with letters to name them. So Cork is in square W as you can see. However, in order to give a more accurate reference for an area we always use the 'six-figure reference'. To do this you first note the letter of the square in which the target area is to be found, eg. W. A good map will divide each of these squares into 10 or 100 smaller squares. This is how you get the six-figure number. The first three figures are the displacement along the line under the area in percentages to one decimal point. The second three figures are the displacement along the line to the left of the area. So the centre of the red spot denoting Cork would be shown in a good scale map to be 71.5 across and 69.0 up. Therefore: W 715 690 is the six-figure reference for Cork.

This is the way one locates a place from practically every kind of a map in the world. If your forget whether you are supposed to go across first or up first try to remember the popular mnemonic:
"you must crawl before you can stand up".

In my references I preserve the integrity of the six-figure reference (S 239 184). This kind of reference points to a particular piece of the country with an area of 100 Square Metres.