From A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, 1837
DRUM, or DRUMMONAHAN, a parish, in the barony of CARRA, county of MAYO, and province of CONNAUGHT, 4 miles (S.) from Castlebar, on the mail coach road to Hollymount; containing 3497 inhabitants. A battle took place here, during the disturbances of 1798, between the English troops and a party of French who had landed at Kilcummin, and taken possession of the mansion and demesne of Ballinafad. The land is of good quality, and principally under tillage, but the system of agriculture is unimproved, and spade husbandry generally prevalent. There is a proportionate quantity of bog, and limestone is quarried both for building and for burning into lime. There are indications of iron ore but none has been worked. Great tracts of valuable grazing land might be obtained by draining the neighbouring bogs, and deepening the channel of the river. Ballinafad, the seat of Maurice Blake, Esq., is situated in a large and richly planted demesne; and Bridgemount, the residence of Joseph Acton, Esq., is also in the parish.
Besides the fairs at Belcarra, others are held at Donomona on May 26th and Oct. 17th. The parish is in the diocese of Tuam, and is a rectory, entirely appropriate to the vicars choral of the cathedral of Christ-Church, Dublin: the tithes amount to £160. The glebe-house was built in 1821, by aid of a gift of £337 and a loan of £120 from the late Board of First Fruits; the glebe comprises 17 acres. The church, which serves also for the appropriate parishes of Towaghty and Ballintobber, is a handsome edifice, in the Grecian style, erected by a loan of £923 from the same Board in 1830. The duty is performed by the curate of the adjoining parish of Balla.
In the R. C. divisions the parish forms part of the union or district of Balla: the chapel, a large slated building, is at Belcarra. A school at Belcarra, in which are about 40 boys and 40 girls, is endowed with a house and two acres of land, given to it by the late Colonel Cuffe; and there are two private schools in that village, in which are about 130 boys and 40 girls. At Geesedon, on the river Miranda, which abounds with pike, are an ancient burial-ground and the ruins of an old castle; and at Donomona are the remains of a castle, which was the ancient family seat of the Blakes, now of Ballinafad.—See BELCARRA.
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Truelove's Journal: A Bookshop Novella
From a sad, comfortless childhood Giles Truelove developed into a reclusive and uncommunicative man whose sole passion was books. For so long they were the only meaning to his existence. But when fate eventually intervened to have the outside world intrude upon his life, he began to discover emotions that he never knew he had.
This is a story for the genuine booklover, penned by an Irish bookseller under the pseudonym of Ralph St. John Featherstonehaugh.
Annals of the Famine in Ireland
Annals of the Famine in Ireland, by Asenath Nicholson, still has the power to shock and sadden even though the events described are ever-receding further into the past. When you read, for example, of the poor widowed mother who was caught trying to salvage a few potatoes from her landlord's field, and what the magistrate discovered in the pot in her cabin, you cannot help but be appalled and distressed.
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger
This book, the prequel to Annals of the Famine in Ireland cannot be recommended highly enough to those interested in Irish social history. The author, Mrs Asenath Nicholson, travelled from her native America to assess the condition of the poor in Ireland during the mid 1840s. Refusing the luxury of hotels and first class travel, she stayed at a variety of lodging-houses, and even in the crude cabins of the very poorest. Not to be missed!
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
Henry Ford Jones' book, first published in 1915 by Princeton University, is a classic in its field. It covers the history of the Scotch-Irish from the first settlement in Ulster to the American Revolutionary period and the foundation of the country.
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
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