The two biggest landlords in the sections of
Ballinrobe where the Walsh and Langan families lived were the
Kenny family and the Knox family.
In addition to renting a house and/or land from the Knox and Kenny families, these were the
people who most likely employed John Walsh and Mathias Langan.
Three very unpopular landlords in the area were, Lord Lucan, Lord Mountmorris and Captain Boycott.
See Lord Lucan and Lord Mountmorris below. See Captain Boycott at Captain Boycott
Originally Catholics who later converted to Protestantism, the Kenny family established
themselves in Ballinrobe in 1740.
For several generations the Kennys owned and managed a large estate plus the local flour mill,
located on Bridge Street in Ballinrobe. "A Topographic
Dictionary of Ireland "by Samuel Lewis, written in 1837 listed the Kenny seat as follows:
The Analecta Hibernica #14 listed Luke Kenny on Glebe Street in Ballinrobe in 1783.
Courtney Kenny, born 1781, married Louise, the daughter of William Fenton of Yorkshire, England, in 1816.
Courtney Kenny died 1863.
His son Stanhope William Fenton Kenny, born 1827, married 1867 Mary Ann
daughter of Guy Lloyd, Croghan Roscommon.
In 1857 the Kennys owned the townland of Lishkellen.
In the 1827 Tithe Applotment, C. Kenny Esq. was listed with:
In addition to the house and mill in town, Courtney Kenny built a mansion in Liskelleen in 1862.
Soon after building it, however, he decided to remain in his town house on Bridge Street.
He subsequently rented the mansion to a number of people over the years.
In 1851 Courtney Kenny was the town Magistrate.
On a list of "Portions of County Mayo of Return of Owners of Land of One Acre and
Upwards in Ireland 1876" from the County Mayo Chronicle #2, Stanhope Kenny of Ballinrobe was listed
with 598 acres.
Stanhope Kenny, his daughter, and sister were the only Kennys listed in the 1901 Census
in Ballinrobe as follows:
The Knox Family
As noted above the Cuff family was granted an estate
in Ballinrobe in 1655
from the Cromwellian Government. The property passed though various hands in the Cuff family
until it was willed to Jane Cuff circa 1828. Jane Cuff was the wife of Colonel Nesbit Knox.
The Knox estate at Creagh Demesne was mentioned in the
1837 description of Ballinrobe by Lewis, see Ballinrobe.
Charles Nesbit Knox, born in 1817, married
Lady Louisa Browne in 1840.
Their son, Charles Howe Knox, was the first Knox to actually live in Ballinrobe.
On a list of "Portions of County Mayo of Return of Owners of Land of One Acre and
Upwards in Ireland 1876" from the County Mayo Chronicle #2, Captain Charles Howe
Knox of Ballinrobe was listed with 24,374 acres.
According to Bridie Mulloy, the Creagh estate
employed a sizable staff from Cushlough and
Carnalecka. She says,
"Their day was long, the huge bell in the yard was rung to summon them
at 7.00 a.m. and again at 7.00 p.m. when thy were due to finish."
Pay was about 6 pence a day, except for more skilled workers.
According to Mulloy,
"it was an established fact that there was a good relationship, certainly in the later years
between the Knox family and local tenantry and townspeople. Furthermore, the legacy of
park, pasture and woodland which Colonel Knox left to Ballinrobe is now a great amenity
to the town."
Creagh estate was planted with thousands of trees even before the mansion was built in 1875.
"Exotic" species like, elm, beach, ash, chestnut, spruce, sycamore, apple, plum,
cherry and pear were introduced. 2,896 trees were planted on Creagh Demesne before 1813.
In 1827, 56,800 trees were planted there. Bridie Mulloy says that Col. Knox (she does not say which one)
had a "special interest" in tree planting and ornamental trees lined
the avenues leading to both the Creagh mansion and Cranmore house in town. She also says that he had a hugh
garden at Creagh for fruit, vegetables and flowers. There were eight acres of orchard for apple, plum, cherry,
and pear on the Creagh estate.
Birdie Mulloy makes an interesting reference to both Colonel Knox, Courtney Kenny,
Carrownalecka and Knockanotish,
"Unless tenants had a lease on their properties they were very much at the mercy of the
Landlord. As such, Colonel Knox is described as 'A fair minded man, who would not
act with deliberate cruelty but being of the ruling class he had, under the inherited
mores of the time, to be see to maintain control'. The best way to do this was to keep
shifting tenants around- generally from a good area to a poor one, in case they might get
ideas that they were entitled to a farm if there were left long enough there.
(One of the harshest of these movements was when Courtney Kenny shifted
tenants from the good land at Knochanothis to the rocks of Carnalecka during the famine years).
"
Italics mine
Bridie Mulloy says that Col Knox left Ballinrobe towards the end of WW 11.
James Howe Knox in the 1901 Census in Ballinrobe
James Howe Knox was listed in the 1901 census in Ballinrobe as follows:
-
James Howe Know, age 58, Lieutenant Colonel, retired army, not married, born Dublin
There were also a cook, age 60, a ladies maid, age 70 (born in France), a parlor maid, age 25, a house maid, age 19
and a kitchen maid, age 18, listed
in the household.
There were 13 outbuildings including 2 stables, coach house, harness room, cow house, calf house, dairy, fowl houses, turf house,
potato house, workshop, shed, and laundry. There were no boiling house, piggery, barn, or forge.
Unpopular Irish Landlords
Many large landowners in Ireland were non-residents.
The land was in the hands of middlemen who leased it for life. These middlemen acted
as agents for the landowners and had the freedom to subdivide and sublet the properties.
They had no permanent interest in the property:
"their business was to make an income out of
it at the least cost, and their immediate position severed the other
wise natural connection between land lord and tenant".
Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, April 1880
In 1870 there were 2,973 absentee landlords in Ireland, Of these 180 were described as
not usually resident but occasionally on the property. All the others were listed as
rarely or never resident in Ireland.
The landlords and agents did little or nothing to improve the property. If the tenant made improvements to the property he ran
the risk of having his rent raised.
There were also some very unpopular landlords who actually spent time on their estates such as
Lord Lucan, one of the most infamous landlords in all of Ireland, Lord Mountmorris who
was murdered in 1880 and Captain Boycott who became a household word due to an incident near Ballinrobe
in 1880.
Lord Lucan
Lord Lucan (George Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan, born in London in 1800) owned estates near Castlebar and Ballinrobe, County Mayo, Ireland totaling 60,570 acres. Before the famine he was mainly an absentee landlord who made quick forays to Ireland and had little understanding of local issues, hated the Catholic clergy, and had little or no sympathy for his Irish tenants.
He was "a Bingham descended from Sir Richard Bingham's brother,-George
Sir Richard being the gentleman who in Elizabeth I's time, first got possession of
Cloonacastle from the Burkes". (The Bridge)
As the effects of the famine became apparent and many tenants did not have the wherewithal
to pay their rents some landlords acted with kindness by defraying the rents and even
by giving money to their tenants. Lord Lucan, however, seized the opportunity to evict
most of his tenants in an attempt to either find
"some Englishman to take over the property as a single tenant" (The Bridge)
or to improve the production of his land. Note: There are stories on
the Internet of what a good landlord Lucan was and how much he improved the situation for
the tenants that remained. Lucan believed that the only solution for Ireland was to
reduce the population so the land could become productive and he was ruthless in attaining his goal.
He said he "would not breed paupers to pay priests" and became known as the Great Exterminator.
It is not known for certain how many tenants were evicted by Lucan near Ballinrobe during the
famine years. "Fr. Conway, a tenant right meeting in Abbey Street in 1850
gives the number as "1,170" persons". (The Bridge)
Contemporary newspapers say that 180 families including 913 people were evicted in
Castlebar in a period of 18 months and that 478 of these became a burden on the Union of
Castlebar, 170 emigrated, and the fate of the remainder was death or unknown.
Lucan apparently did not care and gave little thought to what would happen to the evicted tenants. Some of his comments indicate that he did not even consider them as human beings.
Nor did he seem to care that the burden of supporting the people he had evicted might fall
on other Anglo-Irish in the community or indeed on the English government (as many staving Irish
emigrated to England). Once they were off his land it was not his problem.
See
The Victorian Web Lord Lucan and the Potato Famine
by Cecil Woodham Smith.
According to The Bridge the areas that were affected by the Lucan evictions were
all to the east north/east of the town of Ballinrobe
in the triangle formed by the roads to Tuam and Claremorris and including the townlands of: Ballynakillew, Cloonark, Cloonacastle, Cappacutty, Lavally, Ballinteeaun, Bawn, Caheredmond, Cavan, Knocknacroagha, Rathnaguppaun and Saleen. The village of Cloonark was completely in ruins. Some tenants were able to remain: two in Lavalley three in Bawn, and 2 at Caheredmond, and one at Ballinakillew.
The largest numbers of evictions were in: Cavan with 34 tenants, Knocknacroagha with 20 tenants and Lavally with 20 tenants.
The crowbar brigades did a very thorough job to assure that there was nothing left to
"make it impossible for the tenant to linger about his old home".
(The Bridge)
It also appears that although in one sense Lucan did not give a damn about what happen to his
tenants and who would be responsible for supporting them he didn't want it to be himself.
He had his estates in the area transferred from Ballinrobe district to Hollymount district
so he ended up paying lower rates in Hollymount instead of higher rates in Ballinrobe due
to the increased number of paupers in the area. As Chairman of the Castlebar Poor Union
he closed the Castlebar workhouse in 1847 and was one of the several debtors who owed
money to the poor rate.
In a letter from Rev. Fr. Peter Conway dated Ballinrobe, Friday 26 1848
and published in
the Mayo Telegraham June 7, 1848
Conway said the 16 cottages at Lavally adjacent to the Lavally House were neat
but are now a complete ruin having been tumbled down. The "inmates" of these cottages were
now "stretched on scraws and on the side of the road". (The Bridge)
Lord Lucan's men appear to have been doing more than their duty of evicting the
tenants and leveling the houses. They also beat one
"poor woman" in Lavally who was trying to protect her "three children in measles"
by leaving them in the house and they burned the furniture and bedding of Darby Ronane of Cavan.
(The Bridge)
Apparently most of those evicted were not eligible for government assistance and
in the next week at least 80 families went to Conway seeking aid in finding shelter.
He told them to return to their houses and
"endeavour to shelter themselves and bear patiently with their cruel treatment".
(The Bridge)
In 1856 Lucan found a tenant, James Simpson, who paid £ 2,200 for a 25 year lease on the
the acreage near Ballinrobe. Simpson apparently ran a model farm, paid his workers well (by the local
standards) and made many improvements on the property.
At the end of the lease Simpson had a major law-case
against Lord Lucan asking compensation for improvements he had made on the property
during his tenancy. Lucan denied the claim. Simpson won in the lower courts but Lucan
appealed again and again until he "won out in an appeal to The House of Lords, of which
he was a member". (The Bridge)
Lucan was also a senior office at Balaclava in the Ukraine in the 1854 battle that
pitted British French and Turkish troops against the Imperial Russia army near
Sebastopol in the Crimea. It was the scene of the Charge of the Light Brigade made famous
by Tennyson's poem of the same name.
The Charge of the Light Brigade by
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
While the British claimed the battle as a victory it was in fact a defeat.
The Russians captured seven guns and held their ground.
It was a complicate battle and series of events that led up to the infamous charge
are well told with illustration at
British Battles.com
.
It is universally accepted by military historians that Lord Lucan was to some degree responsible
for the disaster of the
charge of the Light Brigade which resulted in 163 dead and 181 wounded.
"Lucan was irked by being the butt of criticism at the
inaction of the cavalry and was disinclined to delay further action. He rode over
to Cardigan and directed him to charge the Russian cavalry and guns at the end of
the North Valley. After a brief remonstration Cardigan ordered his brigade to mount and
led it forward into the valley. Lucan added a final irritant for Cardigan by ordering the
11th Hussars, Cardigan's regiment, into the second line."
Lord Lucan followed with the Heavy Brigade, but a short distance into the advance,
as the scale of fire became apparent, he halted the brigade and left the Light Brigade
to continue down the valley alone.
Lucan
"refused to accept one iota of blame. Shortly afterwards Lucan was relieved of his
command and recalled to England, where he lived a full life. He received the Field-Marshall's
baton in 1887. He died in '88 at the ripe age of 88."
The Lucans of Lalehame at
Ask About Ireland
Lucan's son, the forth earl of Luncan, seems to have been a more humane individual
than his father. At his death in 1908 at his estate
near Castlebar his death
"was received by the people of Castlebar with feeling of deep regret" and
"it is admitted on all sides that Lord Lucan was one of the most generous of the
landed proprietors in Ireland, and it has been often said that if other men of his
standing emulated his kindly manner towards his tenantry agitation on the land in
question in Ireland would be a mythe.....He was always on the most friendly terms
with his tenants, and there was never a harsh eviction since he succeeded to the estate."
The Lucans of Lalehame at
Ask About Ireland
Most of the information about the evictions near Ballinrobe was
take from The Farm and the Lucan Eviction 1847-50
(Letter of Rev Fr Peter Conway
And Petitions of the Tenants) from the Bridge. John Doherty emailed me a copy of
The Bridge in October 2005.
