History Of The Diocese Of Meath 1860 1993 PDF Download

The book centres on a mass family clearance of thirteen families from their homesteads in Rathcore, a small rural village situated in south county Meath. The circumstances surrounding those evictions bore all the hallmarks of extremely poor landlord-tenant relations. Central to an understanding of the period was a drastic fall in tillage farming practices throughout Ireland, and the corresponding expansion of livestock/grassland farming, particularly so, in the provinces of Munster and Leinster. This shift in agricultural land-use had serious implications for social structure all across post-famine Ireland. The 1865 Rathcore evictions aims to provide an insight into the whole complex nature of the landlord-tenant relationship in Rathcore, set to a backdrop and a period in time in which a trend facilitated by an expansion of land under grass was well under-way in County Meath from the mid-nineteenth century.