Web Quests

Fota House is today run as a charity and the estate, once nearly 27,000 acres in size, is totally dispersed and in the hands of those who farm it.

The movement to reform landholding in Ireland began in the 1870s. In 1870 the land in Ireland was owned by around 4,000 landlords. Between 1870 and 1922 the landlord class in Ireland declined both in numbers and in influence. Watch Dr. Dooley's video for an explanation of this process.

During this same period the quality of life in Ireland improved markedly. From census records we can see this improvement amongst the very poor, the rich, and those in between.

You are a team of curators who have been asked to research and design an exhibition that maps the history of the Land War to the history of Fota House and its owner, Arthur Hugh Smith-Barry.

The three main themes of the exhibition are:

• The Land Acts
• The Plan of Campaign
• Quality of life in Cork, 1911

Your aim is to assess how the reform in land ownership affected those who farmed the land as tenants and also the landlord who owned this land. You must demonstrate to what extent this revolution in land ownership changed the quality of their lives by 1911.

The exhibition you are planning will look something like the one shown here. Thus you must not only research the text panels, but also provide images to illustrate them.

The Maids Mistesses Exhibition at Castle Howard, Yorkshire.

The aim is to present the information in large panels. You can create large poster size panels like this in Power Point. The 'Summary' page provides you with tutorials on how to do this.

You will need to work out, as a team, who will search and gather which information. So, you'll need to allocate which themes are to be covered by each team member(s) and how much information to gather on each topic. Are you going to make 3 separate panels or just one large one?

You might assign roles like editor, sub-editor, image researcher etc.

Smart web searching

You are searching the WWW for very specific information and need to search in a smart way. Use this tutorial to quickly pick up tips on how to 'smartsearch' and recognise quality information online.

Critical reading

The Land War is a period  in Irish history about which people still feel very passionate. As curators, you need to look out for bias,  be dispassionate and balanced. Read this article, can you discern the bias?

In order to communicate the history of the Land War in Ireland you need to be familiar with terms like Anglo-Irish,  landlord, tenant farmer, Land League and Land War. It will also to be important to understand terms like 'Griffith's Valuation'.

In the pages that follow you will be linked to original documents that will help to give real impact to your exhibition posters.

Other very useful contemporary accounts can be found in newspapers. The archives of Irish newspapers are not free, but newspapers from other countries do cover Irish stories. For example, this story entitled 'Irish Leaders to Keep up Agitation' is from the New York Times, July 27, 1902.  It was found by using the Advanced Search in the Google News Archive. At the bottom of the advanced search page you can specify that you want articles at 'no price' - i.e. free!

Useful resources:

• Google Books
• Google Scholar

• Irish History Online will direct you to useful books and articles that you may be able to find free online.

• The UCC Multitext Website is very useful, accurate and provides pictures and text.

The 'Land Acts'  Enacted between 1870 and 1923 transformed land ownership in Ireland. Use this timeline to understand the progression of this legislation.

Some landlords felt that the acts unduly interfered in the relationship between them and their tenants.  This was especially true of the Land Court, set up under the provisions of the 1881 Land Act. Here is an agreement of fixing of rent between Arthur Hugh Smith-Barry and his tenant Richard Scanlan. Notice the price of the yearly rent and the rights to the land which Smith Barry retains for himself.

As the Land Acts progressed, they shifted from protecting tenant rights to providing funds for tenants to buy the land from their landlord. The 1903 Wyndham Land Act was the most successful in promoting this exchange. Some landlords did not wish to sell, and felt that they were being compelled to do so by their tenants. Arthur Hugh Smith-Barry, Lord Barrymore, can be found commenting on this in Parliament in 1904.

During the War of Independence and the Civil War, many tenants who had not yet bought their land took the opportunity to agitate for the right to buy it. The 1923 'Hogan Land Act' effectively compelled all those landlords who had not yet sold their estates to sell them.

Boycotting, one of the chief weapons of the first phase of the Land War, was by the summer of 1885 again making an appearance as an aspect of tenant agitation. In response to this upsurge, a group of Cork landlords, led by Arthur Hugh Smith-Barry of Fota House, came together  to form the Cork Defence Union in September 1885. Their aim was to expose the harsh realities of boycotting and assist those who were subject to it. The CDU manifesto was published on the first page of their pamphlet 'Boycotting in the County of Cork'.  This document, which goes on to detail the 101 known cases of boycotting in Cork, demonstrates that many of those subjected to the boycott were ordinary farmers and labourers.

When, in October 1886, the Irish National League launched 'The Plan of Campaign' the Cork Defence Union was already in place to resist it. The workings of 'The Plan of Campaign' are outlined in the textbook. In essence it was devised as a means of forcibly reducing rent. Tenants who had demanded a rent reduction from their landlord and had not received it, withheld their rent and paid it into a central fund. The fund was used to aid those tenants who were evicted. Landlords who were targets of the Plan and tenants who took over the farms of the evicted were boycotted.  Here is a case study about the Plan of Campaign on one Co. Clare estate.

When the Cork Defense Union came to the aid of Charles Ponsonby, a Youghal landlord who was targeted by the plan,  Smith-Barry's tenants took action. Tenants on his Tipperary estate, spurred on by the leaders of the Irish National League,  began to operate the Plan of Campaign. This resulted in the building of 'New Tipperary', described in the New York Times in January 1890.

In the case of the Plan of Campaign on the Smith-Barry estate, at best it may be said to have ended in stalemate. The tenants eventually accepted the abatements in rent offered by Smith-Barry. Some tenants were bitter at having been encouraged not to pay rent by members of the Irish National League, suffering for the greater political cause, but being left homeless in the process. They asked

'where are the members of parliament and others who induced them to give up their farms, under promises which have not been redeemed, and who now leave them to their fate.' Cork Constitution, 22 January, 1892.

Servants on the steps at Curraghmore, Co. Waterford

Census records began to be collected in 1821 and after this a census was taken at ten yearly intervals until 1911. The census archives contain data that is essential for assessing quality of life, namely: Education, Housing and Family.

A metric for measuring the quality of housing was devised by the census commissioner Captain Thomas Larcom for the 1841 census. The housing types ranged from houses of the first class, such as those lived in by landlords, down to houses of the forth class, which consisted of a single room, often without a window and sometimes shared with animals.

On the 'Land Acts' page you were introduced to a man called Richard Scanlan, a tenant of Arthur Hugh Smith-Barry, who had his rent fixed by the Land court in 1885. In 1901 this same Richard Scanlan was served with a writ for non-payment of rent. He was almost 3 years in arrears. This same Richard Scanlan filled out a census form in 1911, in which you can read about his household and buildings.

No census return form is yet online for Arthur Hugh Smith-Barry and Fota House. For a comparable household we can look  at the Marquis of Waterford's census return for Curraghmore. He filled in two household return forms, one listing his family and the upper servants, another listing the rest of the servants. You can also see the form which describes his buildings.

Use this information to compare and contrast the living conditions of a landlord and a tenant farmer in 1911. How big were their households? What were their houses like? How many servants did they have? The census forms contain all of this information.

This information on early 20th century Cork may also be useful.

Now that you have gathered information on the themes for your exhibition it's time to visit Fota House.

A good way of getting an impression of how the Land War affected Arthur Hugh Smith-Barry is to look at whether the withholding of rent stopped him from extending and maintaining the house and gardens. You need to work out at which parts of the house and gardens date from the 1880s, 90s and 1910s.

Having studied the Curraghmore census form, create fill in this blank census form for Fota. You will need to investigate who was living in the house in 1911 and estimate the number of servants based on the number of servant rooms.

Gather images to illustrate your exhibition panels and make use of the house staff - they are very knowledgeable about the history of the house.