Search Results for 'James Lambert'

The man who opened Connemara to the traveller, and built an infrastructure to encourage trade and commerce in what was a wilderness of bog, mountain, and a rocky sea coast, was the Scottish engineer Alexander Nimmo. He was originally commissioned to investigate the possibility of draining the bogs, and replace them with a landscape of arable land suitable for farming. But Nimmo was the original man who thought outside the box. In his report of 1812 he outlined the total neglect of the region which had about 30,000 inhabitants, mostly living along her coast, eking out a bare subsistence livelihood. But he saw huge potential in the natural wealth of Connemara for tourism, and limited industry. He reported that there were large quantities of fish in its lakes and sea, and abundant seaweed for manure and for the manufacture of kelp. Its agriculture was undeveloped, its bogs badly harvested. All this neglect could be remedied

Humanity Dick Martin’s daughter, Harriet Letitia, wasn’t the only one to write about her father’s victory at the notorious Galway election of 1826. It was such a blatant hijack of votes, a total fraud, and swindle, that it outraged the investigating committee from the House of Commons some months later. But Martin was desperate. Despite his enormous estates, consisting of 196,540 acres, virtually the entire territory of Connemara stretching westwards from Galway, he was deeply in debt. He was a useless landlord in the sense that his collection of rents was haphazard and irregular. He had a generous heart. He did not press his tenants for money.