June 2025 New Releases
On the 103rd anniversary of the destruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland, we are delighted to launch over 175,000 replacement records, shared by our amazing partners - all part of #VirtualTreasury 103.
Monday, 30 June 2025 was the 103rd anniversary of the explosion and fire which destroyed the Public Record Office of Ireland in 1922, in the opening engagement of the Civil War. To mark the date, the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland (VRTI) is releasing over 175,000 historical documents, identified in partner archives in Ireland and around the world, which replace records lost in 1922.
Freely available online for the first time, these give a fascinating insight into seven centuries of Irish history.
Through deepening collaborations between historians, computer scientists, archives, and libraries, across the island of Ireland and around the globe, the VRTI is shining a light on Ireland’s deep history.
On this page, you can:
- Explore new discoveries shared by more than 75 partner archives and libraries across the island of Ireland and around the globe.
- View a total of 350,000 historical records telling Ireland’s story — from medieval rolls to the pre-Famine census.
- Start your research though three new Portals – doorways to periods in Ireland’s story:
- Age of Conquest Portal – five million words of Anglo-Norman (1170-1500) Irish history translated into English.
- Age of Revolution Portal – these documents illustrate the drama of the 1798 Rebellion and Ireland’s links to the American Revolution.
- Population Portal – these genealogical riches include 50,000 names from the 19th-century census destroyed in 1922.
- Focus on the fascinating new Gold Seams.
- View ‘The Royal Revenue, 1270–1450’ — the culmination of five years’ work to fully digitise and translate the largest series of late-medieval Irish documents in The National Archives (UK).
- Discover our Knowledge Graph, a powerful new tool for identifying people and places, and the links between them, in the records.
Latest Updates
June 2025 Release at a glance:
- Our Dublin Gazette curated collection has had over 5,000 new additions since last year.
- The Wills (1536–1813) from the Prerogative Court of Armagh, indexed by Sir Arthur Vicars in 1897 and curated by the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland in 2025, has been added to our curated collections tab.
- State Papers for Ireland (1660–1720) comprises over 10 million words on governing Ireland in the dramatic years following Cromwell’s death.
- The Chief Secretary’s Papers, 1770-1830 demonstrates how the nerve centre of British administration in Ireland functioned during the late 18th and early 19th centuries
- The Censuses of Ireland, published reports and parliamentary papers are now available through 1821 to 1891
- Our Selections from the Memoranda Rolls: Originals, Copies and Extracts collection allows you to eavesdrop on the medieval exchequer clerks at work in their surviving rolls.
- The Collecting Ireland’s History Digital Exhibition has gone live! Curated by Dr Sarah Hendriks in association with the VRTI Library Network Partners, this exhibition explores the diverse approaches to collecting Irish historical manuscripts of the last 700 years; and the role of libraries in preserving and recovering lost materials.
Portals to Ireland’s History
The Age of Conquest Portal
Discover the Virtual Treasury’s medieval gems in the Conquest Portal. It brings together, and allows you to search as one collection, our major collections of medieval materials through which we can glimpse the hidden lives of the communities who lived on the island. Curated by Dr Elizabeth Biggs, Dr Peter Crooks, Dr Paul Dryburgh and Dr Lynn Kilgallon with Dr Daryl Hendley Rooney, Stuart Kinsella and Dr Theresa O’Byrne.
Click here to explore!
The Age of Revolutions Portal
Discover how Ireland was transformed during the global Age of Revolutions through parliamentary records, intelligence reports, and government correspondence. Curated by Dr Tim Murtagh and Dr Joel Herman.
Population Portal
This portal brings together tens of thousands of names, and detailed census reports, from Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries, allowing you to search them as one collection. Curated by Dr Brian Gurrin.
New Gold Seams
The Chief Secretary’s Papers, 1770-1830
The Chief Secretary’s Office served as the main channel of communication between officials in Dublin and London, mediating between the two to align Irish policy with British priorities. This curated collection reunites surviving official papers and personal correspondence of Ireland’s Chief Secretaries, providing rare insight into the executive government at Dublin Castle. From intelligence gathering and countering conspiracies to routine tasks such as managing state finances and public services, these papers reveal how the machinery of government operated during a time of significant political and social change.
The Irish House of Commons (1776-1801)
The Irish House of Commons recovers the debates of the Irish Parliament in a period critical to the formation of Modern Ireland – from the American War of Independence, through Legislative Independence, the French Revolution, the 1798 Rebellion, and up to Union. More than 50 volumes, roughly 20,000 pages (over 3 million words) of searchable content the gold seam brings together a rich collection of source material, opening up the major political developments in the period and offering an in-depth look at the most important debates through the ‘Curated Debates’ feature.
State Papers Ireland
State Papers Ireland is an assembled collection of official letters, private papers, and correspondence that was sent between the English governments in Dublin and London in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In total, the series spans the years 1509–1782, comprises more than 500 volumes, and runs to tens of thousands of letters.
New Curated Collections
Census Reports, 1821-1891.
When the 1821 census was completed, the names of 6.8 million Irish citizens had been recorded. By the time the Public Record office opened, in 1868, four more national censuses had been taken in Ireland, in 1831, 1841, 1851 and 1861, and the returns for the first three of these, along with the outputs from the 1813 and 1821 surveys, were moved to the archive, where they perished in 1922. This collection provides the statistical reports to these respective censuses, alongside those of 1871, 1881 and 1891.
Memoranda Rolls: Originals, Copies and Extracts
Eavesdrop on the medieval exchequer clerks at work in their surviving rolls in this curated collection. The memoranda rolls in 1922 were a near-complete series in the Record Treasury of the Public Record Office of Ireland covering the years from 1302 to 1784. They survive today only through two originals and in nineteenth-century copies at the National Archives, Ireland, and in many more extracts around the world.
The Registry of Deeds
The Registry of Deeds is one of Ireland’s longest running public institutions. First established by legislation passed by the Irish parliament in 1707 and opened in March 1708 and now part of Tailte Eireann it has for over three hundred years served as a public registry for property transactions carried out in Ireland. Housed today in Henrietta Street the Registry contains memorials of every deed registered since 1708 as well as a continuous series of transcript books containing official copies of these deeds. This makes it an unrivalled if still largely untapped archival source for the social and economic history of Ireland.
The papers of William Molyneux and the Dublin Philosophical Society
The Molyneux papers are a collection of manuscripts from the 1680s to early 1700s, containing detailed descriptions of many parts of Ireland and giving accounts of local traditions and natural wonders. Produced in connection with the Dublin Philosophical Society, they were part of a failed effort by Moses Pitt to publish an atlas of the world.
Updated Pages
We have added new content to some of our collections.
Royal Revenue
(formerly the Medieval Exchequer Gold Seam)
The Royal Revenue Gold Seam provides access to one of the most significant and underused sources for the history of late-medieval Ireland and its connections with Britain and the wider world—the records of the medieval Irish exchequer.
1798 Rebellion Papers
This curated collection comprises a searchable database of the Rebellion Papers, a key collection preserved in the National Archives, Ireland. Here you can search and browse a digital version of the existing calendars of the Rebellion Papers, which provide item-level descriptions. You can also view digitised images for approximately 800 items from the Rebellion Papers.
Map Room
This collection contains over 6,000 of the most important historical maps of Ireland, varying in scale and size from the outline of a single building to maps of the entire island. The Map Room includes printed and manuscript maps, topographical maps as well as nautical charts.
New Archive Fever Articles
No. 30 – A Moment of Notarial Creation and an Enduring Friendship: Walter Kylte, William Somerwell, and Swayne’s Register
No. 29 – Waxwork Heraldry: Medieval Seals and Identity in the National Library of Ireland
No. 28 – Gathering Up Secrets: Pagination in Archbishop Prene’s Register
