Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720 - 1940

Surveyor, of Wicklow and Dublin. In the spring of 1752 Jacob Nevill, 'Professor of Mathematics', advertised in the Dublin Journal proposals for publishing by subscription a 'treatise of practical surveying'.(1) In a further advertisement in the Dublin Journal for 7 September 1754, he announced that the treatise, which was in the press and was to consist of 340 large octavo pages, would be available to subscribers for six British shillings and to others for seven shillings. He may not have been able to attract a suffient number of subscribers, for no copies of the book are known; however in the same newspaper a few days later, he announced that he had been commissioned by the Grand Jury of Co. Wicklow to prepare a survey of the county 'to be laid down on a skin of Parchment from a scale of 1 Irish mile to 1 inch and engraved on a copper plate with proper imbellishment'. After some delays in raising the required subscription of £180, he published his map in December 1760.(2) He had moved to Dublin in from Kilpoole, near Wicklow Town, in 1772,(3) when he exhibited a map of Lord Powerscourt's estate in Co. Tyrone at the Society of Artists in Ireland, Dublin, from an address at Edge's Square, Kevin Street, Dublin.(4) Wilson's Dublin Directory lists him with this address from 1772 until 1782.



References

All information in this entry not otherwise accounted for is from J.H. Andrews, Plantation Acres (Ulster Historical Foundation, 1985), 170,245,250,344-6,350,357,431,432.

(1) The Dublin Journal 28 Mar, 9 May 1752, cited by Andrews, op. cit., above, 431.
(2) Faulkner's Dublin Journal 16-20 Dec 1760.
(3) He did not announce his move in The Dublin Journal until 9 Apr 1773, see Andrews, op. cit., above, 245.
(4) IALE II, 505.