GB Historical DB

County-level Statistics from the Irish Agricultural Census 1847-1971.

Table ID:
AGCEN_IRL_CNTY     (1246486)
Contents:
County-level Statistics from the Irish Agricultural Census 1847-1971.
Approx. number of rows:
35,299
Table type:
Raw Data
Documentation Author:
Paula Aucott
Chronology:
The data cover the period 1847 to 1971.
Dates and times are identified by:
   Year

Sources:

  1. The data are all drawn from the published reports of the Agricultural Census. The table numbers and titles vary over time.
  2. This table combines data transcribed by the GBHGIS team and that obtained from the UK Data Service. The 'Transcriber' column identifies who did the transcription.
  3. Transcriber='DIHS': These are transcriptions of the data for Irish adminsitrative units from the reports for a selection of years. Transcribed as content for the Database of Irish Historical Statistics (DIHS) under the project run by E.M. Crawford, M.W. Dowling, L.A. Clarkson, and L. Kennedy at Queens' University Belfast. They were downloaded on 2nd November 2010. They are from the following studies:
  4. Transcriber='GBHGIS': The transcriptions described above have been supplemented by the GB Historical GIS Project, to fill gaps in the sequence. Harold Price added the missing data to make complete transcriptions for Irleand for all revelant rows and columns (including national totals) for 1900-1910 in Summer 2022. This extends the existing Irish data we already held for 1871 only.
  5. The dataset currently holds full transcriptions of data for the whole of Ireland for the following years: 1847-71, 1881, 1891, 1900-11.
    Additionally it holds data separated into Northern and Republic of Ireland for the following years: 1933, 1954, 1960, 1965, 1970
    anbd just Northern Ireland for 1925-30. Data entry for this table is still in progress and more will be added as it becomes available.

Notes:

  1. The table includes national totals for Ireland as far as possible. In some cases the row values are slightly different as they combine variables listed individually in the county data.
  2. This table is currently a work in progress.
  3. The addition of cell refs through matching to the DDS has not been done, therefore this column is empty.
  4. The original report labels have not been added and therefore this column is empty.

Checking:

  1. The geographical units have been cross-checked against the GBHGIS administrative unit gazetteer to ensure that all units are correctly identified. Each matched unit has a unique unit ID assigned to it and this can be used to cross-reference against other datasets.
  2. The data for individual counties for each variable were checked against the overall totals for Ireland. Wherever possible, we also checked numbers for individual counties against available checksums, such as comparing the sum of the acreages of individual crops against the total arable area. In a small number of cases this included correcting printing errors in the original reports by replacing values that led to checksum errors with the number that met both row and column checksums.
  3. In some cases a combined total is given rather than individual values. For example 'Cabbage, Kohl.-Rabi, and Rape' are sometimes combined for national totals but given individually for counties.
  4. Further check sums have not yet been instigated.

Indices:

IndexTypeColumn(s) indexed
agcen_irl_cnty_pk Primary key year, rec_num

Constraints:

The table has the following associated constraints:

ConstraintTypeDetails
agcen_irl_cnty_pk Primary Key See details above for primary key index


Columns within table:

ColumnTypeContents
county_id Text string (max.len.=14). The identifier of the county from the DIHS project.
year Integer number. Year in which the data were gathered. The farm census has always been carried out in June.
transcriber Text string (max.len.=14). Value identifying who did the transcription (see notes above).
source_tab Text string (max.len.=34). Tab from which the data were loaded. Further manual commands must be added to identify the actual tables.
report_table Text string (max.len.=24). Identifier for the table within the report. This is a string, not a number, such as 'Table 2'. Where the information comes from mulitple tables, e.g. where the national totals are in a different table the table number is given for the table containing the county data as far as possible.
col_or_row Integer number. Column or row occupied by the value in the original table, i.e. the location of the variable in the original report. NB Some tables used different columns for each county, in which case this DB field will hold a row number. Many tables also included values for the previous year, but these have been ignored when computing these column/row numbers. (NB the reason why Scottish data for 1870 and 1884 are included in this table is that they were listed in the tables for the following year and included in the OCR output.)
report_label Text string (max.len.=144). The label for the variable as listed in the original report. NB this is not the version supplied by the original transcriber, but text added by the GBHGIS after careful checking against the original reports.
transcribe_label Text string (max.len.=194). The label for the variable as transcribed.
original_label Text string (max.len.=194). [No description available]
hold_size Text string (max.len.=194). The size of the holding, only applies for twentieth century data.
meas_unit Text string (max.len.=16). The units in which the variable is measured. For now, the only value is 'Acres'.
value Floating point number. The numerical value of the variable for the relevant county and year.
row_type Text string (max.len.=12). Abbreviation indicating type of unit.
g_unit Floating point number. ID number for reporting unit, as defined in the AUO.
g_unit_type Text string (max.len.=28). Type of the unit, as defined in the AUO.
g_name Text string (max.len.=104). Official preferred name for the reporting unit, as defined in the AUO.
nation Text string (max.len.=8). Nation identifier to help distinguish units. 'I' for all units before 1922, 'NI' for Northern Ireland and 'RoI' for the Republic of Ireland after that.
cellref Text string (max.len.=52). Cell reference identifying what the particular data value measures, as used in the GBH GIS Data Documentation system. These are set using the agcen_variables table and based ona standardised version of report_label, but also reflect the particular year the label appears in.
g_data_status Text string (max.len.=6). Used as in the main data table: everything loaded in from the GBHGIS transcriptions is labelled as 'P' for public, everything loaded in from the DIHS transcriptions is labelled as 'C' for confidential, while the additional values computed by the script which builds the table have status 'D' for derived.
rec_num Integer number. Sequence number added as the data are loaded, to keep them in order.