When Lord Viscount Morpeth retired from his position as Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1841, the people of Ireland gave him a thank you note for his services. They pasted together thousands of pages, totaling 420meters in length and signed by an estimated 270,000 people. As this predated the Great Famine, where many important records were lost, it’s now regarded as one of the single most important records of our past. With new digital technology, the Ancestry World Archives Project is gathering information about the Morpeth Roll and using it to uncover our surprising history, while preserving it for generations to come.

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