This book reveals how landlord and tenants on a Mayo estate responded to a series of crises during the Victorian era, dominated by the Famine and the Land War. In 1833 the debt-burdened estate of the Catholic Nolan family at Logboy was inherited by Edmond J. Nolan, a Dublin-based attorney. A benevolent landlord, he was forced to sell the estate after the Famine. The purchaser was his wealthy nephew, John Nolan Ferrall, who enjoyed a privileged lifestyle during the post-Famine economic recovery.

But when a confluence of misfortunes reduced Mayo tenants to poverty again in the late 1870s, the Logboy estate was targeted by organized land agitation led by Fenian activists and closely linked with agrarian unrest at nearby Irishtown. Relations between Nolan Ferrall and his tenants deteriorated, resulting in violent confrontations and evictions. The murder of his bailiff in November 1881 was a turning point and he abandoned Logboy for good. After his death, the United Irish League took up the tenants’ case until the Wyndham Land Act of 1903 finally enabled them to become landowners.

The author is a native of Mayo and lives in Dublin.