School: Stonetown, Louth (roll number 16431)

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1. Rural Economics of Other Generations 1855-1890

   

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   The payment of the rent to the Landlord, overshadowed every other consideration. In the case of my grandfather, it amounted to about £2-10 per Irish acre. This rate was pretty general in this district. Stonetown was on Clive's Estate. Tully was on Arthur Hamill's, (?) and Killanny was called the College Estate, as it belonged to Trinity College. The rent was always lower there than here.

   The devices adopted by the tenants to help to pay their crushing rent were many. In those days there was no railway to Carrickmacross, and some of the farmers used to earn money by carting stuff from Dundalk to Carrickmacross and Baileborough, and carting pigs and such animals from there to Dundalk. Three shillings a ton could be got for carting coal from Dundalk to Louth. Pat Hoey of Ravanny used to walk out to Carrickmacross in Summer, to work at cleaning the street. Every night, after walking home, he would spend some hours carrying out turf in bags to his "pass" from where it was clamped, in order that a cart could take it. Then he had arranged with a neighbour to cart it home for him. So he had to "back" out enough every night that would keep the cart going the next day, snatch a few hours sleep, and then walk out to Carrickmacross next morning.

   His neighbour, James Mathews of Ravanny, had an easier means of adding to his income. In the old days of Parliamentary corruption, before the advent of Isaac Butt, every seat in Parliament would be contested by Whig or Tory candidates for whom the people

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   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Language

   English

   Collector

   Pat Murphy

   Gender

   Male

   Address

   Stonetown Lower, Co. Louth