The Griffiths Valuation of Ballickmoyler in 1860

Back to The Bowles of Ballickmoyler

The Griffith's Valuation was carried out in Ireland from 1848-64 to list all the Lessors (the lease holders) and the Occupants of every plot of land and also to set a value on their land and buildings. Queen's county (now co. Laois) was evaluated in about 1858-60. These records give us a valuable snapshot of the occupants of Ballickmoyler in those years, their landlords and the land they lived on.

Note: the following represents my interpretation of the map which has several irregularities on it and some inconsistencies with the published valuation. The majority of the lots are likely to be as I have outlined but corrections may yet be found at which time this page will be updated.

William Bowles appears as a lessor of several houses in Lot 9. By this time he was living in Carlow town and was the last Bowles with an interest in this area.

Griffith's Valuation of Ballickmoyler as Published

(click on the page for a full size image)

Valuation Map of Ballickmoyler Townland (click on a map for a bigger image)

Copy of Griffiths Valuation Map c1860 provided courtesy of Michael Brennan

The added red outline of Ballickmoyler townland and the identification of the lot numbers to correspond to the Valuation are my best guess.

The Cooper family had held all of this land since 1714 when Edward Cooper of Newtown, co. Carlow acquired the townlands of Ballickmoyler, Shragh and Cudagh, about 600 acres in total, from Richard Saunders of Saunders Court, co. Wexford for 640 pounds sterling. Around 1722 he built his estate house on the eastern edge of Ballickmoyler at the top of a hill in Shragh and renamed it Coopershill. Cudagh would be Cloydagh which is just southeast of Ballickmoyler. Unless stated otherwise all of these occupants were Lessors of William Cooper's.

Lots 1 to 5

Patrick Kinchela held two widely seperated lots from William Cooper identified as 1A and 1B which are connected by a red line on my map. Clearly the two would total more than 14 acres but the valuation only reported productive land. Unimproved land with no structure on it was considered of no value and was not included.

James Duff had his house, offices and 22 acres of land at Lot 2. His house marked 'a' and a small cottage marked 'b' that he sub-let to Catherine Connelly are both right under the red line that crosses his lot.

Michael Gorman had his house, offices and 17 acres of land at Lot 3 which clearly shows that this same land had earlier been at least 5 lots supporting 5 families showing how much the population of this area suffered from the deaths and mass emigration during the Great Famine years. His house and offices were at 3a and there was another unoccupied house on his land at 3b.

Robert Furney had his house, offices and corn mill and 11 acres of land at Lot 5 and a further 17 acres at Lot 4 (shown on this map as the combined Lots 4A and 4B).

The map which the Griffith survey team started with correctly showed Furney's corn mill on the north side of the mill stream

but the map which they produced to accompany their published survey incorrectly showed his Lot 5 on the south side. Similarly they confused Lots 9 and 14 as documented below. Such errors were not unusual as the Griffith team members who compiled the published report in Dublin worked from the scrawled field notes made by the team members who had actually visited the site. Although the field books for Ballickmoyler have apparently not survived, others that have show that they were often difficult to decipher.

Lots 6 to 9

Robert Furney was also sub-leasing 4 acres of land from Irwin Whitty, the son of the Rev. Edward Whitty (d. 1804) who had leased 18 acres 'lying and being on the west side of the road leading from Ballickmoyler to Castletown' from Edward Cooper by a lease dated Dec. 20, 1769 which was witnessed by John and William Bowles of Ballickmoyler and a further 36 acres on the east side of the same road in May 1770 on which lease John Bowles was again a witness. Rev. Whitty was the owner of Providence Lodge (house 7a) when the English loyalist residents of Ballickmoyler were besieged there by their United Irish neighbours during the 1798 rebellion. See Ballickmoyler in the United Irish Rebellion of 1798

Ebenezer Bolton, Esq. was holding the rest of Whitty's former land now designated as Lot 7 and living at house 7a, Providence Lodge. Bolton also sub-let a small house and garden in Lot 7 to a Denis Hurley.

Lot 8 was part of William Cooper's own estate farm.

Lot 9 is another error on the Griffith Valuation published maps. They renumbered the original lots 9 and 14 although the original numbers are clearly correct.

Ballickmoyler Townland Valuation Totals

See Michael Brennan's site for an excellent transcription of the names on the Ballickmoyler Valuation