The history of the Brownes of Breaffy

PART ONE

By Tom Gillespie

SOME years ago the former principal of Breaffy National School, and local historian, Tom Higgins, published the history of the Brownes of Breaffy, who resided in what is now the four-star Breaffy House Hotel Resort.

He wrote: The first mention of the Brownes in Co. Mayo is when Josiah Browne, a Catholic landowner from Sussex, England, settled in the Neale in 1680 on land purchased from Mac Mylers. The Breaffy connection is with his son, John, who was granted 200 acres of land there during the period of land confiscations of the Cromweilian Settlement at the end of the 17th century. This land was in the townlands of Ballyshane and Barney and was confiscated from Myles, Ulick and William Bourke.

Before 1641 various branches of the Bourkes owned around 1,000 acres of land in Breaffy.

But here we have the first Dominick Browne of Breaffy, a captain in the army, thus setting the pattern of this branch of the family. His grandson, Dominick, was born in 1701 and died in 1776. It is probable that this Dominick built the first Breaffy House to which the house built between 1890 and 1900 was added.

This 18th century house would have been a modest country landowner’s residence.

The Browne estate had grown and expanded during the period of the Penal Laws of the 18th century.

By 1849, the new owner, Dominick Andrew, a great-grandson of the above Dominick, had just survived the Famine years.

There is no folk memory or evidence of any large scale evictions or clearances on the Browne estate during or after the Famine, as happened all over the country.

What the records show, however, is that Dominick Andrew Browne presided over the sale of the estate in 1885 but was back in Breaffy again during the period of the Land War, and in more prosperous times lived on to oversee the rise of the Brownes of Breaffy to a position of pre-eminence, where they were at the peak of their power and prestige as the century drew to a close.

How did all this come about?

The Great Famine had a traumatic effect on the landlords of Ireland. After the Famine many found themselves bankrupt due to emigration on the one hand, and, on the other, the inability of their tenants to pay the arrears of rent accumulated during the Famine. The only choice facing many was to sell off their encumbered estates.

To facilitate the process a court was established for the sale of the encumbered estates in Ireland. The sale in the 30 years following 1849 involved almost a quarter of the area of Ireland, by transferring land to less indebted owners, and made possible investment in consolidation and drainage.

The idea was that although there would be less tenants, they would be a better class of tenant, more solvent in their larger holdings.

This is the background to the sale of the Browne estate on May 17, 1855, at the incumbent estates courts in Dublin. The records show the petitioner was one William Rhodes, Esq. Particulars of the sale were contained in The Connaught Telegraph of May 2, 1855.

In these documents prepared for the sale we find the following: “The estate has recently undergone great change and improvement, by the farms being increased in size and let to a class of tenant likely to prove satisfactory rent-payers.”

But if the farms were increased in size what happened to the previous tenants? If there were no evictions how were the farms increased in size? Probably by the death of some tenants during the Famine, others forced out over non-payment of rates, then facing the prospect of emigration or the workhouse.

When you find that the population of Breaffy was reduced from 2,452 in 1841 to 1,136 in 1851, you will see the effect of the Famine on the parish.

Incidentally, when the sale took place Dominick Andrew was living in Wales and the business was handled by his agent, William Kearney, Balinvilla, Castlebar.

In any case it seems that consolidation had taken place on the Browne estate prior to the sale, a process which would have further indebted the landlord, due to expenses incurred in fencing, drainage and general land improvement.

Evidence of the sale comes from two sources. The Valuation of Tenements documents for the parish of Breaffy 1856-57 indicate that John William Rhodes is the lessor of all the townlands of the Browne estate. At this time the average size farm on the estate was 18 acres, after consolidation.

The second source of information about the new owner is in the school register of Breaffy National School 1834-1890 in the Public Record Office, Dublin.

An inspector’s report, dated November 11, 1856 stated: “The school premises have been taken into the adjoining demesne now in the possession of John William Rhodes. The boundary wall has been removed and pupils cannot have access to it except by going through the school windows.”

The site on which the school was built was donated by the Brownes on a 99-year lease and up to this time had not been properly enclosed as defined in the terms of the lease. In 1859 this controversy was settled when the successor to William Kearney agreed to enclose the school grounds with a wall in which a door would be inserted.

The documents prepared by the Commissioners of the Encumbered Estates Court provide some valuable information about the Browne estate at this time.

The townlands of the Browne estate were as follows: Cregganavar, Roemore, Lisnarnan, Breaffy, Demesne, Cottage, Pollanaskan, Ahanroe, Cloonaghmore, Carn, Bailykill Lower, Ballykill Upper, and Druminracahill.

The area of the estate was 1,592 acres, one rood, 10 square perches and the annual profit rent was £773,18s.95d.

The valuation and rent is given for each townland. Not a bad annual income when you consider that a labourer’s annual income at that time would be around £7.

Nothing further is known about the previous owner John William Rhodes. He was certainly an absentee landlord and the estate was managed by his agent, William Kearney.

Tom Higgins was unable to establish when exactly the Browne estate came back into the possession of the family but it probably didn’t include all of the original estate because at the turn of the century and down to the 1920s there was a farm owned by a Kelly family from Castlebar at the northern end of the original Browne estate. This farm extended from the Turlough Road over to Whinhill and from the main Castlebar road down to the road through Lisnaran and Ballinvoash.

Before it was sold or divided up among the local people in the late 1920s it was let out as a grazier farm.