Ireland Estate Records

Introduction
Estate records are the land records for the common social classes in Ireland. The large landed estates were held by the upper social class who leased the property to tenants throughout Ireland. Some were absentee landlords, living elsewhere in the British Isles but holding property in Ireland. The overseer managed these properties on behalf of the landlord and had broad oversight for the lives of those living on the land. To search the Irish estate records, the researcher needs to identify the name of the landlord and if the records of that estate still survive. During the early twentieth century, many large landed houses and the records of these tenants were destroyed during movement for independence. Estate records may give names, relationships, ages, maps with property descriptions, residences of emigrants and other details of value to the family historian.

Crown Estates
All land in Ireland was held by the Crown according to the feudal doctrine of allodial tenure and would revert (escheat) to the Crown in instances of attainder, felony or lacking a legal heir. However, there are some estates that were directly managed by the Crown and its overseers.

Landed Estates
The landed families in Ireland held thousands of acres of estate lands that were the backbone of the Irish economy. Farmers and tenants leased their property from these landholders and paid annual rents. When they were unable to pay their rents, they were often evicted from these lands and the records name the new tenants who replaced them. When a husband died, his name is often struck through and the name of the wife, son, or other family member is written into the record.

Encumbered Estates
From the effects of a depressed economy in the nineteenth century, many of the large landed estates were foreclosed by the British Crown. These became known as the "encumbered" estates. A registry known as the Encumbered Estates Court was established in Dublin in ____________ to deal with the significant numbers of bankrupt estates during this era. Approximately 3,000 estates were sold off from 1849-1857 totaling five million acres. With a tenantry weakened by sickness and emigration, their downfall in turn brought about the downfall of the great landed estates.

Lease of Lives

 * One Life and 21 Years -
 * Two Lives -
 * Three Lives -

Tenants at Will

 * Evictions -

Estate Records by County and Landlord
This is a list of known properties arranged by county - it is an incomplete list, so researchers may be able to identify additional landholders and their records. Inventories of available estate papers have been included in Tracing Your Irish Ancestors by John Grenham, and for 350 estates in the counties of the Province of Ulster, namely, Antrim, Armagh, Cavan, Donegal, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry, Monaghan, and Tyrone in Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors by William J. Roulston. In the following listing, the names Grenham and Roulston appear after the name of the estate owner. The reader is directed to those volumes for additional information. The basis for the following list is taken from U. H. Hussey De Burgh's The Landowners of Ireland published in 1878. Land in Ireland often remained in the same landholding families for multiple generations, so the surname of the owners in the mid-nineteenth century may also relate to earlier time periods.

Books and Tutorials

 * 1) Boyd, Abraham and Jane Rochfort Butler Belvidere, Survey of the Estates of Abraham Boyd Esquire and the Countess of Belvedere in the County of West Meath, (Salt Lake City: Genealogical Society of Utah, 1984).
 * 2) Downshire, Arthur Blundell Sandys Trumbull Hill, 3d Marquis, 1788-1845 and Maguire, W. A., Letters of a Great Irish Landlord: A Selection from the Estate Correspondence of the Third Marquess of Downshire, 1809-45, (Belfast: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1974).
 * 3) Trant, Kathy, The Blessing Estate 1667-1908, (Dublin: Anvil Books, 2004).
 * 4) Add - Estate Records During the Famine volume.