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| Genealogy - Tithe Applotment Books . |
The Composition Act of 1823 specified that tithes due to
the Established Church, the Church of Ireland, which had hitherto been payable
in kind, should now be paid in money. As a result, it was necessary to carry
out a valuation of the entire country,
civil parish by civil parish, to determine how much would be payable
by each landholder. This was done over the ensuing 15 years, up to the abolition
of tithes in 1838.
Not surprisingly, tithes were fiercely resented by those who were not members
of the Church of Ireland, and all the more because the tax was not payable
on all land; the exemptions produced spectacular inequalities. In Munster,
for instance, tithes were payable on potato patches, but not on grassland,
with the result that the poorest had to pay most. The exemptions also mean
that the Tithe Books are not comprehensive. Apart from the fact that they
omit entirely anyone not in occupation of land, certain categories of land,
varying from area to area, are simply passed over in silence. They are not
a full list of householders. Nonetheless, they do constitute the only country-wide
survey for the period, and are valuable precisely because the heaviest burden
of tithes fell on the poorest, for whom few other records survive.
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From a genealogical point of view, the information recorded
in the Tithe Books is quite basic, consisting typically of townland name,
landholder's name, area of land, and tithes payable. In addition, many Books
also record the landlord's name and an assessment of the economic productivity
of the land; the tax was based on the average price of wheat and oats over
the seven years up to 1823, and was levied at a different rate depending
on the quality of the land.
The original Tithe Books for the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland
are available in the National Archives. Those for the six counties of Northern
Ireland were transferred to the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland
in 1924. Photostat copies of these are available at the National Archives,
and microfilm copies in the National Library.
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The usefulness of the Tithe Books can vary enormously, depending
on the nature of the research. Since only a name is given, with no indication
of family relationships, any conclusions drawn are inevitably somewhat speculative.
However, for parishes where registers do not begin until after 1850, they
are often the only early records surviving. They can provide valuable circumstantial
evidence, especially where a holding passed from father to son in the period
between the Tithe survey and Griffith's Valuation. The surnames in the Books
have been roughly indexed, in the National Library Index of Surnames, described
more fully in Griffith's Valuation.
The Tithe Applotment Books were compiled between 1823 and 1838 as a survey
of titheable land in each parish. They do not cover urban areas. In general,
the information contained in the records is as follows:
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name of occupier
name of townland
acreage
classification of the land
amount of tithe due |
| The tithe applotment books are available for consultation
on microfiche in Dún Laoghaire. The originals are held in the National
Archives. The Northern Ireland books are held by the Public Record Office
of Northern Ireland (PRONI). |
| The Mayo County Library has a MicroFiche copy of the Tithe
Applotment books for Shrule. |
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