County Wicklow Harbour Records
As a coastal county, the maritime history of Wicklow is central to it's story. The ports of Wicklow and Arklow both had authorities known as Harbour Commissioners which were elected bodies responsible for the building, maintaining and development of their ports. These authorities were established by acts of parliament who granted the right for the Harbour Commissioners to raise funds to fulfill their functions.
Wicklow Harbour
Wicklow Town has a long maritime history and became an increasingly busy trading port by the 19th century. The harbour was in dire need of improvement works and after protracted lobbying efforts by the town commissioners, ship-owners and merchants of the town the Wicklow Harbour Act was passed in 1851. This act ordered that twelve harbour commissioners be elected for Wicklow, consisting of eight ex-officio members from the Town Commissioners and four County Wicklow resident rate-payers and ship-owners.
More information can be found on the history of Wicklow Harbour here and in the publication Wicklow Harbour A History by Jimmy Clery and Andrew O'Brien. There is also further information on Wicklow Harbour in our digitised collections of the Wicklow Borough Corporation and the Wicklow Town Commissioners.
(Arklow Harbour circa 1900, Lawrence Collection courtesy of the National Library of Ireland).
Arklow Harbour
The Arklow Harbour Act of 1882 superseded earlier legislation which had enabled the Wicklow Copper Mine Company at Avoca to develop Arklow Harbour for the purposes of exporting their products. The 1882 Act provided for seven harbour commissioners and paved the way for the improvement of Arklow Harbour by the Commissioners of Public Works. More information can be found on Arklow Harbour here and in the publication Arklow – the Story of a Town by Jim Rees.
Collection
This digitised collection contains the minute books of the proceedings of the Wicklow and Arklow Harbour Commissioners, outlining the daily administration of the ports. The first series relates to the surviving minutes of the Wicklow Harbour Commissioners, dating from 1897 to 1977 and the second series comprises the minutes of the Arklow Harbour Commissioners from 1903 to 1961. (Please note there are gaps in these records, some of which will be filled by a further digitisation project to follow shortly).
The AI transcription technology Transkribus has been applied to these digitised records. The volumes are also searchable by the "control & f" keys.