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Land & Property information for County Clare and places above it in the hierarchy

County Clare

  • The Ireland Land Valuation Office, The archive in the Valuation Office holds a list of occupiers of property for the 26 Counties in the Republic of Ireland. The records go back to 1846.
  • Land Owners in Clare 1876
  • List of Tenants on Colonel O'Callaghan's Estate, Bodyke, 1890s
  • The Tithe Applotment Books, 1823-1838 list each landholder along with details such as townland, size of holding, land quality and type of crops for all of Ireland.  They have been filmed by the LDS Family History Library and are arranged in the catalog under civil parishes.  In 1831 a list was made of Tithe Defaulters.
  • Griffith's Valuation Index 1855
  • 1796 Irish Flax Growers for County Clare.  Lists names and civil parish for those who grew an acre or more of flax.

Ireland

Records of places can provide useful information about where your ancestors lived. The main sources for records of places are Griffith's Valuation, the Tithe Applotment Books, Estate Papers and maps.

GRIFFITHS VALUATION:

The primary valuation of Ireland or Griffith's Valuation - carried out between 1848 and 1864 to determine liability to pay the Poor rate (for the support of the poor and destitute within each Poor Law Union) and provides detailed information on where people lived in mid-nineteenth century Ireland and the property they possessed.  PRONI have produced a free explanatory guidance booklet available here.

Griffith's Valuation (free) is fully searchable online and includes images and maps.

Websites that include Griffiths and/or other land records include:

Index and images to valuations between 1824 and 1856 are available on:

  • National Archives of Ireland
  • Findmypast (££/€€/$$)
  • Familysearch holds 355 microfilms  of Valuation  books available to view as images or microfilm viewable in a Familysearch Family History Library. (Note that the LDS microfilm service was terminated in September 2017, records are now digitized and online.)
  • Family Search  Transcripts of memorials of deeds, conveyances and wills, 1708-1929    (2686 microfilm reels)
  • PRONI Valuation Revision Books covering counties Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone between the years 1864 to 1933.(Subscription)

TITHE APPLOTMENT BOOKS:

The Tithe Applotment Books were compiled between 1823 and 1838 as a survey of land in each civil parish to determine the payment of tithes (a religious tax). Unlike Griffith's Valuation they do not cover cities or towns. PRONI have produced a free guidance booklet, available here.

Tithe Applotment records can also be found on the following websites:

  • Tithe Applotment Books on the NLI website (free)
  • The Tithe Applotment Books, Ireland, 1814-1855 on Familysearch (free)
  • The Tithe Applotment Books, Ireland, 1823-1837 on Ancestry (££/€€/$$)
  • Tithe Defaulters, 1831 on Find My Past (££/€€/$$)

ESTATE PAPERS:

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the vast majority of the Irish population lived as tenant farmers on estates. The administration of these estates produced large quantities of records such as leases and deeds, rentals and account books, maps and correspondence.

The Landed Estates Project is a searchable database of Estates (and their associated Houses & Families) for the period c1700 up until 1914.  The data currently covers the provinces of Connacht & Munster, and also the counties of Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan. (See the "Counties of Ireland" section near the top of this page to see which counties fall within those two provinces).

Archives and Libraries with Estate Paper Collections:

Estate Papers can also be found in County Archives and Local Studies Libraries and  a number of Irish Estate Papers are to be found in U.K. National Archives and County Archives. These can be searched using Discovery on the National Archives website.

A selection of other websites which include indexes and images relating to Estate Papers:

REGISTRY OF DEEDS:

UK and Ireland

  • For English and Welsh records see PRO Leaflet: Tithe Records in the National Archives. Scottish records are held at the National Archives of Scotland in Edinburgh.
  • The University of Nottingham provides a detailed set of explanatory pages: Introduction to Deeds.
  • Legal Terms in Land Records is a useful glossary of obscure terms which occur in property deeds.
  • Robin Alston's Country House Database (archived copy) "represents a first attempt at listing country houses in the British Isles from the late medieval period to ca. 1850, together with an index to all the families so far traced as having occupied them".
  • Estate Records held by Kings College, Cambridge.
  • Disused Railway Stations website - a large and growing set of photographs of closed stations, with brief details of each station and a map showing its location.
  • The Trace My House website provides extensive information and guidance for anyone wishing to investigate the history of a house and the people who lived in it.
  • TNA's Research Guide on Houses - "Records relating to the history of houses are kept in a variety of archives. This guide will help you to find out where the information you are looking for might be, and how to go about finding it."
  • British Listed Buildings - "an online database of buildings and structures that are listed as being of special architectural and historic interest".
  • Researching Historic Buildings in the British Isles - a guide.