Ending of landlord era in Carlow recalled in new book
A BOOK chronicling the ending of landlordism in Co Carlow has been published this week.
is written by Oliver Whelan, a retired director of the National Treasury Management Agency, who holds a PhD in Irish history from Maynooth University.
The book details the depression of the late 1870s, when tenants were supported by town merchants in their efforts to secure rent reductions from landlords. Oliver writes about how the Irish Parliamentary Party, led by Parnell, helped by exerting pressure on the British government.
Following this, in 1881, Oliver records how Gladstone’s government established land courts to adjudicate rents and provided loans to tenants to buy their holdings. Under the of 1903, he says, most landlords sold to their tenants.
In the 1920s, the Free State compulsorily acquired the holdings of landlords who had not sold and established the tenants as freeholders. The plight of evicted tenants and of small uneconomic farmers proved intractable. As the economy developed, viable farms became bigger and most smallholders migrated to towns or emigrated, Oliver writes.
In the 1960s, land division by the government was completed and only two big houses of the former landlords, Borris and Lisnavagh, remained in family hands.
The book costs €40 and is published by Four Courts Press.
