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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. Although not a full list of householders they nonetheless 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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Griffith's Valuation
In order to produce the accurate information necessary
for local taxation, the Tenement Act of 1842 provided for a uniform valuation of all property in Ireland, to be based on the productive
capacity of land and the potential rent of buildings. The man appointed Commissioner of Valuation was Richard Griffith, a
Dublin geologist, and the results of
his great survey, the Primary Valuation of Ireland, were published between 1848 and 1864. The Valuation is arranged by:
and lists every landholder and every householder in Ireland. Apart from townland address and householder's name,
the particulars given are:
- name
of the person from whom the property was leased (immediate lessor);
- description
of the property;
- acreage;
- valuation.
- The Valuation was never intended as a census substitute, and if the 1851 census had survived,
it would have little genealogical significance. As things stand, however, it gives the only detailed guide to where in Ireland people lived in the mid-19th century, and what property they
possessed. In addition, because the Valuation entries were subsequently revised at regular intervals, it is often possible
to trace living descendants of those originally listed by Griffith.
The Surnames section of this site provides counts of the number of households of a particular surname recorded in the counties and civil
parishes of Ireland, based on the returns of Griffith's Valuation.
- Copies
of the Valuation are widely available in major libraries and record offices, both on microfiche and in their original published
form. The dates of first publication will be found under individual counties.
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