by Eamonn Cullen

Terence Dooley, Burning the Big House. Yale University Press, 2023 (paperback).

Early in the morning of 2 April 1878, a bitterly cold, sleety day, my grandfather went out to shoot a few rabbits. He lived with his parents in a cottage in Cratlagh Wood, near the village of Carrigart in Donegal. When he got back home, the family heard gunshots coming from the road. The local landowner, Lord Leitrim, who owned estates in Donegal, Leitrim and Galway, had been shot as he travelled by coach to Milford. My grandfather was taken for questioning at the local police barracks but was later released. Of the three men accused of Leitrim’s murder, two died before they came to trial and one was never caught.

Leitrim lives on today in song and story as a harsh landlord.

It was the beginning of a turbulent time in Irish history. Burning the Big House provides a fascinating account of the impact of revolutionary change on Ireland’s landed elite during the period 1879-1923, through the prism of their great houses. The houses became symbols of opulence and oppression as movements for land reform and Irish independence grew. The Great War, the Irish War of Independence of 1919-21, the establishment of the Free State and the Civil War of 1922-23 were all to have an impact on the relationship between landlords and tenants as a new Ireland emerged. Between 1920 and 1923 almost 300 Big Houses across the country were burned to the ground.

Colonial past

The roots of rural inequality lay in the country’s colonial past. Dooley quotes Elizabeth Bowen, whose Cromwellian ancestors settled on confiscated land in north Cork. She wrote: ‘My family got their position and drew their power from a situation that shows an inherent wrong… having gained this position through an injustice, they enjoyed their position through privilege’. Isabel Chavasse of Newcourt recalled that ‘Such a thing as shaking hand with anyone who was not of our own class was unheard of’ (p.2).

They lived in grand style. The large estates of the landed elite were passed down through the generations. Most of the families belonged to the Church of England, went to the same public schools and were loyal subjects of Crown and Empire. They built Big Houses in every county in Ireland, surrounded by hundreds of acres of parkland, woodland and gardens, which often dominated the landscape. They were designed by the leading architects of the day and became repositories of fine arts collected over generations.

The impact of global agricultural recession in the nineteenth century, which gave rise to agrarian revolts and nationalist movements across Europe, also saw the establishment of the Irish National Land League in 1879. Its initial aim was to ensure affordable rent levels for tenants, but landlords argued that they could not afford the loss of income. A Land War followed, characterised by rent strikes and evictions. As Dooley points out, it proved to be a major turning point: from 1879 the privileged position of landlords was challenged at every level – political, economic and social – as Irish life, politics and society underwent revolutionary change (p. 2).

Gladstone’s Land Act of 1881 created the Irish Land Commission which had statutory powers to adjudicate on fair rents. Its land courts reduced rents by an average of 21 per cent across the country, but in response, financial institutions, wary of the plummeting value of agricultural land, closed down avenues to borrowing. The landed gentry had to cut back on expenditure. By 1887, for example, the Duke of Leinster had reduced his household establishment by 50 per cent (p 12).

Social revolution

The Land Act of 1903 brought about a social revolution. It resulted in a transfer of around 75 per cent of Iand to tenants by 1914 and paid generous prices and cash bonuses to landlords. It was effectively a government bailout. But hopes for local economic regeneration disappeared as most of the money was invested in the global market. By failing to embrace the spirit of the 1903 Land Act, Dooley observes, the aristocracy lost an opportunity to create a more meaningful role for themselves in Irish rural society (p 18). Their political priority was retention of their place in the Empire and the Union. During the 1914-18 war, 82 per cent of Irish families listed in Burke’s peerage were represented at the Front (p. 61).

The war brought about a resurgence of the land question. The British government prioritised finance for the war effort and halted land purchase in Ireland. There was a backlog of Land Commission cases and the rising political movement Sinn Fein began to exploit the state’s failure to deal with rural inequalities.

Eamonn Cullen is a retired teacher.