What do you understand by Landlord Landscapes in Ireland? Discuss their origin, distribution, scale and demise

Landlords were owners or lease holders of property who rented some or all their land to others. By 1703, most Irish landlords were of English or Scots origin, and had got their property during the plantations and land confiscations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Most of them rented it out to Irishmen while themselves remaining residents of England. The subject of landlordism was a highly significant issue in the history of Ireland. This essay will examine the origin, distribution, scale and demise of Landlord Landscapes in Ireland.

All the counties of Ireland were owned and controlled by a minority, the landed gentry. When the county is broken down by barony and parish units we can get a more accurate picture of landscape variations in the mid-nineteenth century. These baronies were taken by force of arms and settled by successive invading societies, spawning adjacent dependent towns and villages. Examples of this are the North Salt barony in Kildare, controlled by Fitzgerald. The differences in barony sizes were immense, ranging from 8,748 statute acres for Kilcullen to 48,264 acres for Carbury. The great estates and houses, such as Carton and Castletown, may create the impression that Kildare’s landscape was dominated by such grandiose enterprises. Such a notion is erroneous not only in respect of Kildare but for Ireland as a whole where the moderately sized estate of 1,000 to 5,000 statute acres was the more common form of ownership. Of the 337 estates in the island of Ireland valued at £5,000 and over in 1876, seven were located in County Kildare.  The duke of Leinster’s estate was the only Kildare property in Jones Hughes’s list of the 33 in Ireland valued at £20,000 and over.

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The most visible aspect of the estates was their mansion house, ranging from great palaces like Castletown, Powerscourt and Castle Coole to substantial houses, perhaps little bigger than rectories, like Woodbrook in Roscommon, but forming centres of employment and social power. The houses of the gentry were not for the most part sited conspicuously on hills or precipitous cliffs. Indeed, Lord Palmerston at Classiebawn was one of the few Landlords whose front door could be seen from the public road. However, the paraphernalia of demesnes were strikingly visible. Examples are the demese walls stretching for miles at Carton and ...

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