Talk by Visiting Fellow Hywel Griffiths on ‘Historic perceptions of flooding in rural Ireland’

All Welcome!

Hywel Griffiths-  Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University

Current predictions of the impacts of climate change on environmental and social systems have brought human-environment interactions into sharp relief, and have further highlighted the importance of understanding the historical and cultural contingencies of people’s perceptions of the environment. The value of historical documents such as diaries, newspaper reports, personal correspondence, estate records, church records, tax records, school log-books and creative literature for investigating historical weather has been demonstrated in many settings. Such documents have a dual value in that they can be used to extend and augment limited existing instrumented records of flooding, drought or snowfall, for example, but also can be a window into individual and social and cultural perceptions of historical weather events or the environment more generally. This talk presents preliminary findings from analysis of historical newspapers and the Vice-regal Commission on Arterial Drainage (Ireland) of 1905-6. These sources not only allow a reconstruction of historical floods in rural Ireland, but also provide insights into public perceptions of flooding and its causes (including siltation of river channels and a lack of management), adaptation strategies (particularly in agricultural contexts) and attitudes towards responsibility for management of rivers and drainage in a period of changing land ownership and conflicting water-related interests.