Judicial Rents - Ibrickane - 1882-1899

The Land War in Ireland culminated with the Irish Land Act 1881 and this in turn was followed by the Land Purchase Acts of 1885,1888, 1891 and 1896.

The Irish Land Commission and the Land Courts were instituted under the act of 1881, which to a large degree conceded the demands of the Land League for Fair rents, Fixity of tenure and Freedom of Sale.

The new land courts were empowered to fix 'Judicial rents' on application from tenants on leases in excess of 12 months and the attached schedule shows the summary details, as published, for the Barony of Ibrickane, Co. Clare for the period from 1882 to 1900.

The judicial rent was determined by two sub-commissioners employed by the Land Commission and it has been suggested that these sub-commissioners generally overvalued the land holdings and therefore the resulting rent determinations were still excessive. Notwithstanding this, up to the end of 1882 rents had been revised downwards by an average of about 21%.

Although the 1881 Act provided that judicial review would stand for a period of fifteen years there was provision for appeal, and despite the legal costs involved for the tenant, this procedure appears to have been regularly adopted.

The attached schedule has been extracted from the Irish Land Commission reports over the period 1882 -1900 by this author, who also prepared it for online publication. The schedule which has over 2200 entries shows the full details for the Barony of Ibrickane with summary entries for other Clare townlands which were on the same page as the Ibrickane entries.

Donal De Barra
2009