Offaly History lecture centres on Catholic owned estate

The upcoming Offaly History lecture centres on a Catholic owned estate in the 18th century.

Dr Emma Lyons (UCD) will give the talk entitled 'Morristown Lattin: the estate and its tenants in the 18th century' on Zoom this Monday, January 24 at 7.30pm. To get the link, email: info@offalyhistory.com

Through an examination of the estate records, this case study provides an insight into the adaption and survival of a Catholic-owned estate during two tumultuous periods in Irish history. The analysis of leases, rent rolls, correspondence and legal documents, permits the tracing of patterns of land ownership and inheritance across the generations, in addition to the tenants and their links with the estate over generations.

This analysis of family and estate papers also sheds light on many other areas of social history that has largely been obscured. This includes the role of women in seventeenth and eighteenth centre in estate management.

Dr Emma Lyons holds a PhD from the School of History in University College Dublin, where she has lectured in early modern History. Emma held the Research Studentship in Irish History at the National Library of Ireland, cataloguing the Castle Leslie estate papers, and was researcher for the National Library of Ireland's World War Ireland exhibition. Her research focuses on the impact of the Penal Laws on Irish Catholic landowning families, specifically the education of Irish Catholic children on the Continent in the eighteenth-century, and Catholic landownership during the period.

Emma's book, Morristown Lattin, 1630-1800: the estate and its tenants, based on research for her PhD thesis, was published by Four Courts Press in September 2020, and her article 'To 'Elude the Design and Intention' of the Penal Laws: Collusion and Discovery in eighteenth-century Ireland - A Case Study' in Law and Religion in Ireland, 1700-1920 has just been published.