Search Results for 'Clanricarde'

Between 1869 and 1909 a revolution took place in land ownership in Ireland. A succession of Land Acts gradually reduced the powers of the landlord, and gave their former tenants the means and the opportunity to buy out their tenancy, and to own their own farms. Generous terms were given to tenants by the Wyndham Act of 1903. £100 million was advanced for land purchase, which was immediately availed of by the great majority of tenants. Tenants were advanced the whole purchase price of their holding, at a little over three per cent to be repaid over 68 years. Most landlords were pleased to accept the ready cash, and a whole new social structure emerged throughout the island. However, initially landlords were not compelled to sell, and the independently wealthy marquis of Clanricarde of east Galway refused to cooperate. But his days of evictions, disparaging remarks about his tenants, his bully boy land agent Edward Shaw Tener and his henchmen, were numbered.

Week I

Once off the duel-motorway at Athlone, the traffic on our main roads is often so heavy that if I have time, I will take a country road home. Loughrea’s welcome new by-pass makes a visit to that old busy town now worthwhile, and easy. Its difficult to pass St Brendan’s Cathedral, and its magnificent Celtic stained glass windows and sculpture, without a visit. And then, take the Gort road to Galway. On a glorious summer afternoon, the hedgerows are bursting with white blackberry blossom, wild irises, fuchsia, honeysuckle and foxglove. I was looking for Woodville House and its newly opened walled garden, but ruined cut-stone walls, and high gates reminded me that here, in this corner of Galway, poor tenant farmers stood up to the powerful Marquis of Clanricarde to own the land they worked on. The so-called Land War was fought nowhere more fierce, nor attracted more world wide publicity than on the Clanricarde estates in Portumna, Woodford, Eyrecourt and surrounding areas.