‘A miserable thing to be a woman’

Mary Anne Tyrrell (1821–94) and her landed estate

Lesley Whiteside

At the age of 32, Mary Anne Tyrrell, having suffered the early death of her parents, husband and two children, faced multiple challenges as a landowner. Living in a dilapidated house on a rundown farm with two infant sons and a teenage daughter, she lacked the training to manage her scattered estate in neighbouring baronies in counties Kildare and Offaly. She initially felt overcome by difficulties but by the end of her life she had some sense of fulfilment, having successfully raised her children and left the estate intact. Her story provides a rare glimpse into the ideas and attitudes of a free-thinking woman in a society that was still closed to feminism and the changes that it would bring.

Lesley Whiteside is archivist at Ballinderry House, Co. Kildare, and at Monksgrange, Co. Wexford. Her works include the definitive histories of two historic Irish secondary schools, a biography of a Church of Ireland primate, George Otto Simms, and several books on ecclesiastical stained glass. She has contributed a number of articles to the Journal of the County Kildare Archaeological Society. Her most recent book is Farming and society since 1700 in the barony of Carbury, Co. Kildare (Dublin, 2024).