Gallica, the digital library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, offers a world of valuable historic material, which can be consulted and downloaded for free. I have used it for a few years as part of my research, but am always amazed by the sheer volume of material that is available on the site. There are currently over 5 millions documents online. Among these, you can find books, newspapers, magazines, photographs, cartoons, videos and even sound recordings.
Below are some of the maps of Ireland that I found using a simple keyword search. You can zoom in to a high degree and even download the maps if you like. Of course, the French had good reason to have maps of Ireland at their disposal - in case they wanted to land troops for example. However, I am not interested in that here. I just want to show the quality of the material that you can view on the site. Have a look for yourself and I guarantee that you will be surprised by what you can find. It is only a click away: https://gallica.bnf.fr/accueil/en/content/accueil-en?mode=desktop
Map of Ireland (1797). Image source.
Map of Carrickfergus Bay (17th cent.). Image source.
Map of Dublin (1757). Image source.
Map of Cork Harbour (1690). Image source.
Map of Cork City and Suburbs (1759). Image source.
Map of river at Limerick (1690). Image source.
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