Charles Vallancey

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General Charles Vallancey was a military surveyor sent to Ireland. He remained and became an authority on Irish antiquities.

He at one stage possessed The Great Book of Lecan which he passed on to to the Royal Irish Academy^[1]

[edit] Extract of 1778 report on West Cork

‘there was only one road between Cork and Bantry; you may now proceed by eight carriage roads beside several horse tracks branching off from these great roads, from Bantry the country is mountainous and from the high road has the appearance of being barren and very thinly populated; yet the valleys abound with, corn and potatoes and the mountains are covered with black cattle in 1760, twenty years ago it was so thinly inhabited an army of 10,000 men could not possible have found subsistence between Bantry and Bandon. The face of the country now wears a different aspect: the sides of the hill are under the plough, the verges of the bogs are reclaimed and the southern coast from Skibbereen to Bandon is one continued garden of grain and potatoes except the barren pinnacles of some hills and the boggy hollows between which are preserved for fuel’ (Original in British Library)