Estate ownership of land in Tipperary is examined in new book

A book by Dr Des Marnane (with Mary Guinan Darmody) titled From Landed Estates to Family Farms: Land Ownership in Tipperary was launched by Professor William Nolan, at the Tipperary Excel last Saturday.
The book is published by Fitzpatrick Printers and is on sale from them priced at €35 each. Professor Nolan is an Emeritus

Professor of Geography, at University College Dublin.
Over the course of his career, he has lectured in diverse topics in geography in many third-level institutions in Ireland, including the National University of Ireland, Galway, and University College Dublin, securing a permanent lectureship there in 1989.

Professor Nolan began by giving a brief résumé of Dr Marnane’s historical contribution to the community.
“He has contributed 100 articles to the Tipperary Historical Society Journal, has been Editor of Tipperary Historical Society since 2017 and Secretary since its inception, a documentary filmmaker, a broadcaster with Tipperary Mid West Radio, and he has 22 entries to the National Library.”
Professor Nolan went on to say that he was delighted that Des had completed his latest work.
“Many of you will be familiar with Land and Violence - A History of West Tipperary from 1660, published in 1985 and Des followed this up with Land and Settlement - A History of West Tipperary to 1660, published in 2003.
One thing about Des is that when he starts something he will always finish it and he will always complete it in 1,2 or 3 volumes.

Looking through his book I was picking out some elements which I thought might be of interest or which would appeal to Tipperary people, but there is so much in it, and it is so rich and his use of sources is so judicious and most of these sources are original.

He is particularly good and very impressive on the Government commissions, details of the various commissions set up by the British Government to try and sort out Ireland in the 19th century.
An attractive part of this book too is he has used little-known journals from landlord agents and so on, and it is his mastery of sources that has impressed me so much in looking through this book.

In this volume, Des writes about history and he says ‘history is the recovery of the past through the application of evidence and judgment’ and this is really what Des Marnane’s work is all about.
The use of sources, and he has been in every archive in Ireland, and has also searched out archives in England and beyond, has been so astute, and one thing that is right throughout this book is that Des is not a partisan historian, he is a very fair historian and he lives to the reader and he lives to the facts, as he gets them and as he cites them.
One of the great things about this book is that if you are from any part of Tipperary and particularly south Tipperary, you will find your own area mentioned, and of course, this confirms to us all how important our own areas are when we see them written down in a book such as this.

The estate system of land ownership is the subject of this file.
It is a thorough examination of the origins, practice and decline of the system in the context of County Tipperary and the old South Riding in particular. This is what a good book does, it stimulates you to look around your own place and where you came from and to see how it fits into the narrative that Des has wielded so carefully and so successfully.

He builds up a very formidable case in relation to how the landlords originated in Ireland, how they came here, the role of legislation such as the Act of Settlement in 1662, the Act of Explanation 1665 and the Commission of Fortified Estates 1702/3.
One of the great Tipperary landlord families featured throughout this book are the Maude’s of Dundrum, probably an example of the worst excesses of landlordism, and the reason why the system had to collapse at some time anyway.
He talks about adventurers such as the Dawson's, the Sadlier’s, Erasmus Smith, Perry’s of Woodroffe and Joseph Damer. That is the fascinating thing about this book, the narrative begins here with the landlords at their peak, the epitome of landlordism, and at the end of the book they are gone, and it’s an extraordinary story, it’s more like an epic film than a historical book” said Professor Nolan. Congratulations to Dr Marnane on another excellent publication, which is available to purchase at Fitzpatrick Printers.