July 2008 Lives of Landed Gentry Launched Online by NUI Galway

The era of grand estates in western Ireland has been captured in a unique project by a team of researchers at NUI Galway. The comprehensive electronic database and archive devoted to landed estates and gentry houses in Connacht, c. 1700-1914, was launched recently at the University by Minister of State, Dr Martin Mansergh, T.D. The database contains references to over 1450 houses and some 1,650 estates. The aim of the resource is to assist and support researchers working on the social, economic, political and cultural history of Connacht from c.1700 to 1914. The project involved the distillation and collation of data from a broad range of historical sources, and its concise codification on an estate/name basis. According to NUI Galway's Professor Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, who was Project Principal: "For the first time ever researchers will have ready access to a comprehensive database of sources relating to the world of the landed society of Connacht from the end of the seventeenth century to the beginning of the break-up of the large landed estates under the land purchase schemes that followed the Irish 'land war' of the late Victorian and Edwardian period. This is the world of landed estates and gentry houses that dominated rural society from the era of the penal laws until the eve of the great war". The project, whose senior researchers were Marie Boran and Brigid Clesham, was hosted by the Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences at NUI Galway and funded by the Irish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS). The Project is one of the first of its kind to be completed under the Research Infrastructure Grants scheme of the IRCHSS. For more information visit www.landedestates.ie ENDS