Saturday 1 January 2022

Irish Land Commission records to be made accessible

In my new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, I discuss the creation of the Irish Land Commission from 1881, its early remits, how it subsequently evolved (including beyond Partition, through which it was divided into two agencies, north and south), and how it was finally wound up, both north and south of the border. From my book:

In 1879 the Land War then exploded in Ireland, with the main issues being how to address the parasitical nature of landlordism, with demands for fair rent, better security of tenure, and an improved right to buy. In response, the Land Law (Ireland) Act 1881 was passed by the British Government, establishing a new Irish Land Commission, which initially sought to intervene in the rents issue, but which also assumed the work of the Landed Estates courts. The Commission soon also took on the role of a tenancy purchasing commission, assisting those wishing to buy their holdings outright with loans to be repaid over 35 years at 5% interest, and granting tenants vesting orders for their new holdings, essentially title deeds in their name, clear of any previous burdens or encumbrances. The scheme was further extended with the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act in 1885, which extended loans repayments to over 49 years, and again in 1889.

For family historians, the potential of the records for land based research is immense, in that they document in great detail the history of ownership for great swathes of the island of Ireland. There is just one slight problem - until now, the records for the Republic of Ireland have not been made available for access to the public.

I say the Republic of Ireland particularly, because this is one of those areas where Partition actually ended up as a benefit for those living in Northern Ireland, with the records for the north transferred to PRONI, and which have long been available to consult. In my book I discuss how to gain access to the northern records (there is a bit of a learning curve!), but also the indexed all-island survey of the records from 1881-1909 by Edward Keane held at the National Library of Ireland, which testify to the existence of many records in the south. The records themselves are sadly languishing in a warehouse in Portlaoise, with the authorities having been deaf to the cries of academics and historians alike for decades.  

Well now, at long last, some good news. An article in the Irish Times at https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/treasure-trove-includes-record-for-almost-all-land-in-ireland-1.4762067 discusses plans to finally digitise some 200 'search aids' to the records:

The search aids are made up of thousands of pages on court approvals for land purchase agreements, loan advances and repayments, and migrant books detailing how people moved from one area to another to take up land. They are a critical guide for finding individual documents among the 35,000 separate sets of records, some of which comprise dozens of boxes, in the maze-like archive.

The project to digitise the Land Commission archive will take years to complete, but this is a welcome - and very LONG overdue - development for those carrying out Irish land research.

In the meantime, you can find out more about the background to the records - and how to access the records in the north in particular - in my book, which is currently on offer at Pen and Sword for £12 plus p&p at https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Tracing-Your-Irish-Ancestors-Through-Land-Records-Paperback/p/19283

(Please note: if living in the Republic of Ireland, you may find it cheaper to purchase a copy from the Ulster Historical Foundation at https://www.booksireland.org.uk/store/all-departments/land-records, as the post-Brexit postage costs to Ireland from England are a bit ludicrous just now; the UHF postage costs are currently cheaper)

Chris

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

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