In ‘The Agri labourer in Irish Society’ by Dominic Haugh (quoted in my first posting above), the author says,
The settlement that came out of the land war ignored the plight of the agricultural labourer except the legislation allowing local authorities to build cottages
.
That legislation is called the Labourers’ (Ireland) Act 1883, and it is referred to in ‘Peasants into Patriots’, a thesis by C Maguire:
https://dspace.mic.ul.ie/handle/10395/1024 in footnote No. 38 on page 174:
Labourers (Ireland) Acts (Cottages): Return showing the number of cottages built and authorised in Ireland under the Labourers Acts, 1893-1894, LXXV.69, p. 4. Although the union of Limerick is in the county Clare, it has not been considered in the total 473 labourers cottages that were built in the union by 1893. The most of this 473 was built in Tulla, (134), Ennis, (123), Kildysert (53), Scariff, (35), Kilrush (31), Ennistymon, (27), Corofin (9), Gort (5) and Ballyvaughan (0)
.
If we think of the Land Acts as part of the revolution in land-ownership that occurred in Ireland in the late 19th century, and early 20th century, then these cottages are part of that revolution. I must say I am intrigued as to how Tulla Poor Law Union managed to finance so many cottages, as compared with other unions. Was it something to do with the amount of rates collected, or was it something to do with the composition of the committee of guardians of that union?
These cottages replaced many of the 4th class houses in Ireland (a 4th class house was typically just one room and/or mud walled, often called a cabin). The house that De Valera grew up in was one such a cottage:
http://www.buildingsofireland.ie/niah/s ... o=21903913. It is described in
De Valera: Vol. 1: Rise, by David McCullagh, in the chapter entitled ‘More or Less an Orphan’. McCullagh describes the childhood of Eddie de Valera (as he was called then) when he lived with grandmother, Elizabeth Coll, in Bruree, Co. Limerick:
Patrick Coll, senior, died in 1874, which worsened the family’s already difficult financial situation. The family lived in a single-roomed thatched cottage with mud walls on the quarter-acre of land about a mile outside Bruree village on the Athlacca road. Later, just as her grandson came to live with her [1885*], Elizabeth Coll was given a labourer’s cottage, and her holding doubled to half an acre.
The interior of the 22-foot-by-16-foot slate-roofed cottage is surprisingly spacious. Inside the half door is the stone flagged kitchen, with two rooms to the right; when de Valera lived in the cottage there was just a single attic room, over the downstairs bedrooms – the kitchen was open to the roof. The attic room or loft was reached with the ladder which hung on a peg near the door during the day. All cooking was done on the open fireplace. (p 19).
*Eddie had come from New York, at age 2 and a half, in the care of his uncle, Edward Coll, on the
City of Chicago, which departed on 9th April and arrived on 18th April.
McCullagh says, "In the social hierarchy of rural Ireland, land ownership was everything, and the Colls were near the bottom of the heap with their labourer’s cottage and their half-acre of land". (p 21). Nevertheless, those nice solid, slated houses were the envy of many in rural Ireland. Many of them are still standing, but often now so modified (with the addition of bathrooms, etc) that they are not easily recognised.
The patch of land that came with the cottage was useful for growing potatoes and cabbage etc, but not big enough to rear livestock. McCullagh says that Eddie’s uncle, Pat Coll, kept some cows, but as he had only half an acre of land, the cows were allowed to graze on the ‘long acre’, the grassy roadside verges. “This was illegal, so young de Valera had to keep watch for the local RIC men on patrol. If he spotted them, he would either drive the animals off their route or pretend he was moving them from place to place”. (p 22).
Now, going back to the link between the building of cottages and the Land Acts, I found (online) this article by Michelle Norris very helpful: Norris, M; (2003) 'Housing' In: ed. M Callanan and J Keogan (eds).
Local Government in Ireland: Inside Out. Dublin: Institute of Public Administration. pp.165-189 (Norris often refers to a thesis by Tony Fahey, Fahey, 'The Agrarian Dimension of the Irish Welfare State', Dublin, Economic and Social Research Institute, (1998), which sounds very interesting, but is an unpublished seminar paper). In Norris’s article, the link between the building of cottages and the Land Acts is shown mainly in following passages:
An unusual aspect of the early development of local authority housing in Ireland in comparison with Britain, is the heavy emphasis placed on provision for low-income workers in rural areas. Initiatives in this regard began with the Dwellings for the Labouring Classes (Ireland) Act, 1860, which allowed landlords to borrow from the Public Works Loans Commission for the purpose of building cottages for their tenants. However, as a result of landlords’ disinterest, this initiative was largely unsuccessful. It was followed by a series of increasingly more radical rural housing schemes, which granted subsidies that were significantly more generous than their urban counterparts, starting with the Labourers (Ireland) Act, 1883 (as amended in 1885) which enabled boards of guardians to provide cheap housing for rent to farm labourers, subsidised out of local rates and low-cost loans from central government.
As is detailed in figure 9.1, this initiative, together with the Labourers Act, 1886, which extended housing eligibility to part-time agricultural labourers, resulted in the completion by rural local authorities of 3,191 labourers’ cottages in 1890 alone. Output over the following decade averaged at 700 dwellings per year, but it rose dramatically after the introduction of the Labourers (Ireland) Act, 1906. This Act established a dedicated Labourers Cottage Fund to provide low-interest loans for rural local authority house-building and, most significantly, sanctioned that 36 per cent of the loan payments would be met by central government.
Fahey (1998) links the advent and expansion of the labourers’ cottage programme with the campaign for the redistribution of land from landlords to tenant farmers, which was one of the main preoccupations of Parnell’s Irish Parliamentary Party during the late nineteenth and early twenieth centuries. Fahey characterises the programme as a ‘consolation prize’ for the farm labourers who were excluded from the process of land reform but were numerous enough to warrant the attention of the Irish Parliamentary Party. His argument in this regard is supported by the fact that each of the Labourers Acts referred to above was introduced immediately following a Land Act that provided subsidised loans to allow tenant farmers to purchase their farms, and subsidies for house-building under the Labourers Acts were strikingly similar to the land purchase subsidies (p 168-9)
Furthermore, the combination of the various Housing of the Working Classes Acts and the Labourers Acts bequeathed the infant Irish State a very sizeable local authority housing stock, albeit one which would prove inadequate to meet the needs of the urban poor. Before 1914, Irish local authorities had completed approximately 44,701 dwellings, in comparison with only 24,000 council dwellings built in Britain during the same period (Malpass and Murie, 1999). By independence, 50,862 local authority dwellings had been built in Ireland, 41,653 of which were constructed under the terms of the Labourers Acts, and accounted for about 10 per cent of the total rural housing stock, while only 8,861 dwellings had been completed by urban authorities (Fahey 1998) (p 169-70).
Fahey (1998) argues that the de Valera government was finally forced to concede to the sale of labourer’s cottages – after many years of lobbying from tenants – because its 1933 Land Act had made significant reductions in the annuities payable by tenant farmers who purchased their holdings. Furthermore, he contends, the way in which ‘land reform continued to influence the substance of housing policy … gave Irish public housing a character that in some respects was unique in Europe’ (p. 10). As was mentioned above, the influence of land reform during the nineteenth century had conferred the Irish public housing system with a uniquely rural character. In the twentieth century, the land-reform-inspired advent of tenant purchase would contribute in the long run to the reduction of the social rented stock in this country to a level which is low in comparison with most other northern European countries. As this scheme was initially confined to labourers’ cottages, the contraction impacted first on rural areas. By 1964, approximately 80 per cent of the 86,931 labourers’ cottages built by that date had been tenant purchased, in contrast to only 6,393 urban dwellings (Minister for Local Government, 1964). (p 173).
And here is an article by Arlene Crampie, which is also helpful:
A Forgotten tier of local government – the impact of rural district councils on the landscape of early twentieth century Ireland. Under a sub-heading, ‘Building Labourers’ Cottages’, on page 37, she says,
Perhaps the aspect of rural district council activity which had the most significant landscape impact, however, was the provision of social housing through the Labourers’ Cottages Acts. Initially introduced in 1883, the Labourers (Ireland) Act (46&47 Vict. c.60) provided for the first state-funded rural public housing scheme in Ireland. As with public health and sanitation legislation, responsibility for providing labourers’ cottages was assigned in the first instance to the boards of guardians. The boards were responsible for developing and implementing housing schemes which were financed through a state loan to be repaid over time by local rates. In spite of the unwieldy legislation and early procedural difficulties, the boards of guardians met with a good deal of success. Helped by legislative improvements in 1885, 1886, 1891 and 1892 (48&49 Vict. c. 77; 49&50 Vict. c. 59; 54&55 Vict. c. 71; 55 Vict c.7), the guardians succeeded in gaining authorisation for 16,056 cottages nationally between 1883 and 1898, when social housing functions were transferred to the rural district councils (27th Annual Report of the Local Government Board 1899, pp 64-65; see Crossman 2006, pp 144-182 for a detailed account of the work of the guardians in this period). This figure was, however, far outstripped by the 38,004 cottages authorised for the rural district councils between 1898 and 1920. By 1920, some 47,966 were completed, two thirds of which were constructed by the rural district councils (48th Annual Report of the Local Government Board 1920, p. 76). Fraser (1996, p. 35) attributed the increased rate of building under the rural district councils to the inclusion of labourers in the franchise, noting that ‘by giving labourers the vote it forced rural authorities to pay greater attention to the demand for Labourers Act dwellings’. While this certainly focussed local authorities’ attentions, their new zeal was also facilitated by a significant legislative alteration under the Labourers (Ireland) Act, 1906, which extended the definition of an agricultural labourer, simplified procedures and expanded available funds, extending the benefits of the acts to an ever widening population (6 Edw. VII c. 37). The joint efforts of the guardians and councillors in implementing this policy had a significant impact on Ireland’s housing stock as labourers’ cottages accounted for 10% of all dwellings in the country by 1922 (Fahey 2001, p. 123), almost totally replacing the once common mud cabins of the poorest classes.
The Labourers cottages and the Rural District cottages are just one small aspect of the history of agricultural labourers, but they are also of interest to anyone who enjoys reading the landscape.
Sheila