The Land and People of County Meath, 1750-1850

Peter Connell

The mid-18th century marked the beginning of a century of dramatic growth in the Irish population. It was also a century when the Irish economy was transformed as it became increasingly shaped by the demands of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. This monograph traces how these great changes were played out on the rolling plains of Co. Meath. Long characterized as a rich county dominated by strong farmers involved in the fattening of beef cattle, the picture that emerges is a much more complex one. Making use of a wide range of sources, including estate records and the surviving manuscript census of 1821 for the Navan baronies, this study explores the relative position of the different classes in rural society over the period. It suggests that by the 1840s a large proportion of the population had been marginalized by changes in the economy, by the decline in the domestic linen industry and by the growing demand for land. The Great Famine is set in this context and portrayed as the denouement of Meath's landless labourers and cottiers. The geography of the thousands of mud cabins that disappeared from the landscape in these years is explored as a lost, and largely forgotten, generation, that succumbed to the workhouse, death and emigration.