Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History (31 page)

Ionic
. An architectural style and one of the three Grecian orders, Ionic columns are distinguished by a capital ornamented with four spirals and a fluted shaft.
See
Corinthian, Doric.

Irish Architectural Archive
. Founded in 1976 to collect and preserve records of Ireland's architectural heritage, the Irish Architectural Archive now holds the largest collection of historic architectural records in Ireland. In addition to 80,000 drawings, 300,000 photographs and 11,000 printed items, the archive holds related business records, account- and letter-books and architectural models at its premises in 73 Merrion Square, Dublin.

Irish Church Act
. The Irish Church Act (32 & 33 Vict., c. 42, 1869) was the legislative instrument which disestablished and disendowed the Church of Ireland and sundered the union of the Anglican churches in Ireland and England. From 1 January 1871 the Church of Ireland ceased to be the state church and became a voluntary body. In recognition of the fact that the people of Ireland had contributed to the grossly over-endowed Irish church, most of its temporalities were seized and vested in commissioners of church temporalities who were to liquidate the assets and re-distribute the funds as specified in the legislation. A corporate body, the
Representative Church Body
, was established to receive ownership of church buildings, glebes and schoolhouses subject to purchase clauses. Existing ministers were protected by compensatory lifetime annuities. Those who elected to retire – and about 1,000 did so choose – were given lump sum payments. The vast majority of clergymen opted to commute their life interest into a lump sum and had it paid to the Representative Church Body which became their new paymaster. In tandem with the disendowment of the Church of Ireland, the
regium donum
to the
Presbyterian
church and the annual state subvention to
Maynooth College
were discontinued. The Presbyterians and Maynooth College, however, were compensated for their losses by final payments of £750,000 and £372,000, respectively, from the former assets of the church. When the foregoing sums were deducted, Gladstone calculated that between £7–8 million would be available to relieve distress in Ireland. The Irish Church Act included one of the earliest land purchase schemes. The Church Temporalities Commissioners were empowered to sell land to church tenants who were aided by the advance of three-quarters of the purchase price subject to a mortgage repayable over 32 years. The idea came from John Bright who advocated a similar scheme in the 1870
Landlord and Tenant Act
.
See
Bright clauses, Church Temporalities Commission, General Convention. (Nowlan, ‘Disestablishment', pp. 1–22; Connell,
Finances
.)

Irish Folklore Commission
(
Coimisiún Béaloideas Éireann
). A government commission established in 1935 for the collection, preservation, classification, study and exposition of all aspects of Irish folk traditions. The commission replaced the earlier Irish Folklore Institute (founded 1930) which evolved and recruited from the voluntary Folklore Society of Ireland. A further mutation in 1971 saw the Irish Folklore Commission re-styled the Department of Irish Folklore and its incorporation into University College Dublin. The core of the commission's collection comprises almost 2,000 volumes together with sound recordings, photographs, sketches and plans which were donated or collected by full-time and part-time collectors working in different parts of the country. A schools' collection conducted in 1937–8 in practically every national school in the 26 counties amassed over 1,100 manuscript volumes. The bulk of material printed in
Béaloideas
, the journal of the Folklore Society of Ireland, is drawn from the commission's collection. (Almqvist, ‘ The Irish Folklore Commission', pp. 6–26.)

Irish Land Act
(1909). Popularly known as ‘Birrell's Act' (after the then chief secretary for Ireland), this act (19 Edw. VII, c. 42) extended the category of congested districts and authorised the compulsory purchase of lands in congested areas. Payments to landlords were to be made in government stock plus a graduated bonus for bringing their lands to sale. The rate of interest on tenants' repayments was 31/2% over 65 years which proved attractive to tenants as some 50,000 holdings were sold under the scheme.

Irish Land Commission
. A legal tribunal established by Gladstone to carry into effect the fair rent provisions of the
Land Law Act
(1881). As the Commission's adjudications were legally binding, at least one of the presiding commissioners was a high court judge. Sub-commissions were established to hear applications for fair rents from landlords or tenants throughout the country. The bulk of cases were dealt with by the Land Commission but the county court also played a role in fair rent adjudication. Within a couple of years a majority of tenants had obtained judicial rents that were binding for 15 years and which formed the basis of purchase annuities in the land acts after 1881. Local agreements between landlords and tenants became binding when they were registered in the county court. Between 1881 and 1923 – when its role in fair rent adjudication was abolished – the Commission oversaw in excess of 500,000 fair rent agreements and orders. In addition to acting as a court of arbitration the Land Commission was tasked with facilitating the transfer of land ownership from landlords to tenants by advancing loans to tenants to purchase their holdings. Take-up was slow at first and it required a series of ever more attractive legislative acts to entice landlords and tenants into the market in numbers. The floodgates opened with the
Wyndham Act
of 1903 which remodelled the Land Commission so that its main emphasis came to be on land purchase and re-distribution. Wyndham established the
Estates Commissioners
, a new body within the commission, to administer the provisions of the act. It simplified the land purchase procedure and offered landowners a bonus of twelve per cent to sell entire estates rather than individual holdings. In conjunction with the
Congested Districts Board
, the Estates Commissioners became active in relieving rural congestion by improving, enlarging and rearranging newly-purchased estates before vesting them in tenant-purchasers. From 1907 they were empowered to purchase land specifically for the purpose of settling evicted tenants. In 1909 the Land Commission was granted the power to purchase land compulsorily in congested districts and from 1923 – when it assumed the functions of the Congested Districts Board – this power was greatly enlarged and extended to embrace any untenanted land in the country that was required for the relief of congestion. Thereafter the focus of the Land Commission became the purchase and re-distribution of land, a process which included the radical scheme of transplanting farmers from the west of Ireland to farms in Meath and Kildare. The commission was dissolved by Dáil Éireann in 1992 and its records, including schedules of areas (land surveys and maps), inspectors' reports and schedules (value for money certification), documents of title, deeds, wills, mortgages and documents of purchase, were transferred to the National Archives building. Containing over six million documents, this vast repository of landed estates records remains, to all intents and purposes, inaccessible to researchers. By writing to the Keeper of Records, Land Commission, Bishop Street, Dublin 8, you may be allowed examine the schedules of areas and accompanying maps but without special permission you cannot access the remaining material. A survey of Land Commission records relating to 9,343 estates was undertaken by Edward Keane for the National Library of Ireland in the 1970s. Keane's bound volumes of reports on individual estates are available for consultation in the catalogue room of the library, together with topographical and names card indexes.
See
Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1885, Land Law (Ireland) Act, 1887, Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1891, Irish Land Act (1909). (Buckley, ‘The Irish Land Commission', pp. 28–36; Dooley,
Sources
, pp. 38–41; Kolbert and O'Brien,
Land reform
, pp. 34–45.)

Irish Manuscripts Commission
. The Irish Manuscripts Commission (1928–) was established to survey and report on collections of manuscripts and papers of literary, historical and genealogical interest relating to Ireland. From time to time the commission publishes a volume or volumes relating to specific collections or records. The
Calendar of Ormond deeds
, for example, was published in six volumes while the
Civil Survey
(1654–56) comprises ten volumes relating to the counties of Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Tipperary, Kilkenny, Wexford, Kildare, Dublin, Meath, Donegal, Derry, and Tyrone.
Analecta Hibernica
, the commission's journal, publishes material not extensive enough to be issued in stand-alone publications.

Irish National Foresters Benefit Society
. A nationalist
friendly society
founded in the 1870s by seceders from the British-based Ancient Order of Foresters. Borrowing from the craft of forestry, the foresters styled their chairman chief ranger and their welfare officers woodwards. Weekly dues enabled the society to employ a doctor and provide for the burial of deceased members. With over 9,000 members organised in 128 branches, the Foresters was the largest friendly society in operation in Ireland. However, it made little impact in the cities where many smaller societies were firmly entrenched and it remained a feature of rural and small town life. (Buckley and Anderson,
Brotherhoods
.)

Irish Record Commission
. The Irish Record Commission (1810–1830) was established by royal commission in 1810 for the better regulation of administrative records which were then in a deplorable condition. The commissioners were directed to methodise, regulate and digest the records, rolls, books and papers in the public offices or repositories and to bind and secure those that were decaying. They were to compile and print calendars and indices and publish original records of general interest. Sub-commissioners were appointed to carry out these tasks and they set about examining the material stored in the Bermingham Tower, the parliamentary record office, the rolls office, the chief remembrancer's office and the auditor general's office. Another group was assigned the task of preparing an authentic edition of the Irish statutes for publication. Considerable difficulties were encountered on account of ‘the deranged state of the records'. In 1815 they published the first volume of reports (containing the first to the fifth annual reports) and a second (the sixth to the tenth annual reports) followed in 1820. Both contain the returns with supplements from the above offices (as well as the state paper office in the Record Tower, the office of the
surveyor-general
, the
quit-rent office
and the prerogative office), together with catalogues and inventories. In 1825 the commission published three volumes containing an abstract and reference to the principal records and public documents relating to the Acts of
Settlement and Explanation
then preserved in the rolls and the chief remembrancer's office. In 1812 they decided to publish John Lodge's incomplete work,
Liber Munerum Publicorum Hiberniae or the Establishment of Ireland
. Although the project was abandoned in 1830
Liber Munerum
finally made it to the printers in 1852. In 1827 the commissioners published
Inquisitionum in officio rotulorum cancellariae asservatorum repertorium
and in 1829 a second volume. The first contained a repertory to the
inquisitions
post-mortem
for Leinster and the second related to those conducted in Ulster. Unfortunately they were printed in an abbreviated Latin form and unless one is familiar with Latin they are pretty much worthless. Finally in 1828 the commission published the first part of the first volume of
Rotulorum patentium et clausorum cancellariae Hiberniae calendarium
which contains the
patent
and
close
rolls from the reign of Henry II to the reign of Henry VII. The Irish Record Commission was shut down in 1830 for financial reasons. It had been heavily criticised for the disorganised manner in which it went about its business and some of the transcription work of the clerks was lamentable. But for the destruction of original records in the Four Courts in 1922 the collection of the commission's papers in the National Archives would be of little interest to historians today. Now, however, they constitute a key historical source for the history of medieval and early modern Ireland. (Griffith, ‘The Irish Record Commission', pp. 29–38.)

Irish Republican Brotherhood
. Founded on 17 March 1858 by James Stephens, the IRB was a secret, oath-bound society dedicated to the achievement of an Irish republic by physical force. Although a minority movement, the IRB flourished in the 1860s but the conditions required for a successful rising – a major imperial military engagement elsewhere and a coherently structured, well-armed revolutionary force prepared to take advantage of ‘England's difficulty' – were never realised. Forewarned by leaks, the government thwarted an attempted rising in March 1867 and an alternative approach – to attack Britain through Canada – failed on three occasions. Stephens' leadership style was a source of continuing controversy within the movement and his reputation was damaged by his abandonment of the rising promised for 1866. Riven by splits, both at home and in the United States, and with little opportunity for revolutionary action, many IRB members became involved in agitation during the
Land War
(1879–82). Apart from a bombing campaign in England, the IRB was largely overshadowed by the Parnellite push for home rule in the 1880s. The movement was resuscitated in the early years of the next century with the emergence of Sinn Féin, the return to Ireland of the convicted republican bomber Thomas Clarke and the establishment of the militant
Irish Freedom
newspaper. The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 provided an opportunity to strike while the British army was heavily committed in France. The 1916 rising was conceived largely by the supreme council of the IRB and every member of its military council was executed in the aftermath. With Michael Collins as its president, the IRB continued to work for an Irish republic after 1916 through the Irish Volunteers and Sinn Féin but separatism was now a popular issue and there was little necessity for secret societies. In 1921 the supreme council voted eleven to four to accept the Anglo-Irish treaty thereby splitting the movement along pro- and anti- lines during the subsequent civil war. The IRB was dissolved in 1924. (Williams, ‘The Irish Republican Brotherhood', pp. 138–149.