Landlords and tenants in County Carlow, 1879–1960

Oliver Whelan

This book chronicles the ending of landlordism in Carlow. In the depression of the late 1870s tenants were supported by town merchants in their efforts to treat with landlords while the Irish Parliamentary Party, led by Parnell, helped by exerting pressure on the British government. In 1881, Gladstone’s government established land courts to adjudicate on rents and provided loans to the tenants to buy their holdings. Under the Wyndham Act of 1903 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. By 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. 

Oliver Whelan is a retired director of the National Treasury Management Agency and holds a PhD in Irish history from Maynooth University.