Hussey De Burgh's, The Landowners of Ireland, 1878

Cat No.:   IET0089:

The unabridged title of this publication provides the extent and scope of the work republished here on CD-Rom: The Land Owners of Ireland: An Alphabetical List of Estates of 500 Acres of £500 Valuation and upwards, in Ireland, with the Acreage and Valuation in each County. And also Containing A Brief Notice of the Education and Official Appointments of Each Person, to which are added his Town and Country Addresses and Clubs.

Compiled by U. H. Hussey de Burgh, a land agent, and published in Dublin in 1881, de Burgh's stated aims for his publication are interesting and to some extent put his work at odds with later publications treating on the landowners of Great Britain and Ireland. These were in the main, as Hussey correctly points out, based on a number of Government Returns, one of which was published only two years prior to Hussey embarking on his compilation. Hussey's aim was in part, to correct the Government's erroneous publications on the extent and value of Ireland's larger estates and by his own confession did this with the aid of the landlords themselves. Whether or not this provided a more accurate statement of the true extent and value of Ireland's larger estates as published, for example, John Bateman's Great Landowners of 1883 is unclear. What can be said is that Hussey was only interested in Irish landowners and not the remainder of Great Britain.

Hussey uses the phrase landowner in the same manner as that used in the Government's own returns, namely an outright in fee owner or an individual holding a lease for more than 99 years or shorter leases renewable in perpetuity. This as Hussey correctly points out, masks to a degree the true extent of some of the larger estates.

In addition to the name of the landowner, the county in which land is held, the extent of land held and valuations thereon, Hussey also provides some interesting biographical information on a large proportion of the landowners noted, which must is likely to have originated with the landowners themselves. This information is predominantly biographical in nature and includes government appointments, gentlemen's clubs, marriage details, addresses, family seat and so on.

For an Irish audience Hussey's compilation is perhaps more satisfactory that John Bateman's later publication as it treats entirely on Irish landowners and whose qualification for inclusion was a mere 500 rather than the 3,000 acres set as the benchmark by Bateman. 

Presented in more than 500 pages with explanations of abbreviations, locations of gentlemen's clubs, etc., this fully-searchable CD-Rom is a must for anyone interested in who owned Ireland towards the end of the 19th century.

No. of CDs is:  1 ;   Format is:  PDF ;   Searchable?:  YES;

FastFind:  No;  ISBN No.:   unavailable;