The Land Commission collection contains millions of records that can be seen as a critical part of the DNA of rural land ownership in Ireland.
The institution was established in 1881 under Liberal prime minister William Ewart Gladstone in response to the Land War of 1879, which started out as a drive for rent concessions before becoming a campaign against landlordism led by the Land League.
The commission’s first function was to fix rents that were binding on both landlord and tenant. That reflected agitation for demands known as the three Fs: fair rents; fixity of tenure; and free sale of an interest in a tenancy.
But it was also given powers to buy up landlords’ estates with a view to transferring the ownership to farmers who could draw down loans from it for part of the price. This became its main work, heralding more than a century of operations before it was finally dissolved in the late 1990s and its records taken under the control of the Department of Agriculture.
The commission typically sold to estate tenants, says Conor Gallagher, who oversees the files in the department. “They were supported in purchasing the land by advances from the government which then they repaid as an annuity,” he says.
The records are extensive. “You will be able to say who was the tenant on a particular field,” says Gallagher. “We’d know their names, their family connections, how long they’ve been on the land. So it’s a huge repository of information.”
Transfer of wealth
Over time, the impact was seismic. As the imperial order shattered and momentum gathered towards independence, the commission processed most of the land of Ireland.
“The story, at its most basic, is the story of a revolution in the ownership of land in Ireland, that is the vast transfer of wealth that took place on this island,” says Paul Rouse, professor of history at UCD.
“Land which had previously been held by a few thousand landlords was ultimately transferred to the ownership of tenant farmers, ordinary people around Ireland.”
The records show how the British authorities sought to confront demands for independence – which they called the Irish question – by dealing with the land question.
But they show also successive Irish governments managed the ownership of rural lands, a key focus of the nationalist project.
Rouse says the files reflect “everything from Big House Ireland” and the lives of the elite “to the attempts of the very poorest people of rural Ireland to gain enough land to secure the future of their families”.
