Estate records and the making of the Irish landscape: An example from County Tipperary

Abstract

Estate records, other than estate maps, have been surprisingly underutilised by geographers involved in analysing the transformation of the Irish landscape during the landlord era. The objective of this paper is to illustrate the specific value of estate account books, and other materials, in interpreting changing patterns of settlement and landholding in 18th and 19th-century Ireland. Using the fragmentary remains of estate records from the O'Callaghan lands of south-western Tipperary, three phases of landscape development can be suggested. Phase I (c. 1730- c. 1775) can be interpreted as a critical formative phase with both landlord and well-to-do 'middleman' farmers involved both in the expansion of a commercialised pastoral economy and in initiating change in the arrangement of farm and field systems. The second phase (c. 1775- c. 1815) witnessed a phenomenal economic boom with significant demographic and landscape consequences - a new mansion and demesne are created; the landlord town of Clogheen expands rapidly while in the countryside, intensification of land use, and related increases in the number of farm holdings and cottier settlements, all add momentum to the growing demographic explosion. From 1815 onwards, however, a phase of readjustment may be distinguished as a kind of balance is struck between demographic pressures on the land leading to further fragmentation on the one hand, and deliberate estate policy aimed at the maintenance of viable farm holdings on the other. Careful use of estate records - while recognising their limitations - can therefore be seen to assist greatly in the elucidation of the processes and patterns of landscape change in Ireland over this era.