PLATE 12
Perspective View of the Linen Hall in Dublin, with the Boxes and Bales of Linen ready for Exportation, the Emblems of their Industry …
WILLIAM HINCKS 1783
BECAUSE THE WHOLE EMPHASIS of the study of the Irish linen industry in the nineteenth century has concentrated on its indus-trialisation, little or no attention has been directed to the cardinal importance of the handloom weaving industry, especially in the first half of the nineteenth century. Yet it has to be recognised that after the introduction of the wet-spinning process into Ireland in the late 1820s, the great bulk of the yarns spun in Irish mills were woven into cloth by handloom weavers throughout the countryside of the province of Ulster. It has been calculated that Irish linen production increased from around fifty million yards in the early 1820s to sixty-five million yards in the early 1850s.2 Nor did the introduction of powerlooms in the 1850s kill the handloom weaving industry at a stroke. Several decades were to elapse before powerlooms were adapted to weave the patterned damasks and then the lighter qualities of linen. The process of change was predicted in 1859 in a journal of the linen trade:
From the enhanced value of manual labour and other causes, the supply of handloom goods is becoming less abundant and decidedly less certain, and there are many circumstances which would seem to indicate that while the days of progress in powerlooms have unquestionably set in, those of decadence in handlooms give warning of approach …
The handlooms will sustain their superiority in the fine goods, 1800 to 2600, for years to come, though as the powerloom machinery becomes more perfect in future, I have no doubt it will gradually be creeping upwards, and encroaching on what at present is considered the special domain of handloom weaving.3
Although great prosperity was enjoyed by the handloom weaving industry during the boom caused by the cotton famine of the American Civil War, it could only postpone the inevitable. The spread of powerloom factories soon undermined the old rural economy that had grown up around the domestic linen industry. Yet the impact was not the same in every district throughout Ulster because the products of the industry varied greatly in substance, finish, quality, and price:
In Ireland, coarse linens for blouses, etc. and for the common kinds of export goods are chiefly made in the county of Armagh; medium and fine kinds of export cloth about Ballymena and Coleraine; damasks and diapers at Lurgan, Lisburn, and Belfast; lawns at Lurgan and Dromore; cambrics at Lurgan, Waringstown, and Dromore; heavy linens and sheetings for the home market at Banbridge; hollands in the counties of Antrim and Armagh; shirt fronts, woven in plaits, at Dromore; and the coarsest fabrics, such as bed-ticks, coarse drills, etc., at Drogheda.4
No study has been written yet about any of the districts affected by the rapid decline of handloom weaving. They cannot be pinpointed readily from the printed census returns although their tables on ‘occupations’ do identify the Poor Law Unions concerned. Often tradition is a better guide. Once located they provoke a range of questions that can be answered from readily available source material such as census returns and valuation records. How did the social structure of the townlands relate to handloom weaving? Are they associated with very high population densities? Did weaving communities, for example, flourish most in townlands where subdivision and subletting had fragmented the holdings so that they often provided little more than accommodation? Were such communities most likely to develop on marginal land? From census returns the demographic trends can be charted to determine population movements in terms of both inhabitants and inhabited houses, changes in family size, the sex ratio, the rate of population decline and its relation to the housing stock, and the experience of the several religious sects.
Such information can be of great value in the preparation of an oral history project on any of these themes, for while oral history is probably the only method of fleshing out the dry figures, they in turn inform and colour the whole approach and suggest new questions. They provide us with the information about contemporary families, their occupations and their holdings that is essential to reconstruct apicture of the community’s view of itself. What were the characteristics of a ‘well-doing’ family? What futures did such parents see for their children? What standards of behaviour did they set? What misfortune befell them? How did they farm their smallholdings? Are there any stories about the consolidation of these holdings? How did they view the Swiss-embroidery and hem-stitching enterprises? Who were the last weavers and how did they manage to carry on their craft? What traditions remain about them? The answers to these questions will help us to understand the character of the community at the present time and may provide us with some valuable information about its past.
After such an extensive vindication of this method of approaching the study of a rural community, the indulgence of the reader has to be sought for the limited aims of the actual study. It confines itself to an examination of documentary sources that are readily available for every district, in order to discover how the decline of a particular handloom weaving community was reflected in the census returns and the valuation records and how its surviving housing stock was assessed by the census enumerators.
This paper is a report of an investigation into the history of a community in the northwest of County Down that was engaged in the weaving of cambrics and damasks. Cambric weaving had expanded very quickly in the Lurgan/Dromore district in the early nineteenth century and its products sold well. ‘In 1826 for every 1,000 dozen of French cambric sold in the English market 100 pieces of Irish were sold; in 1846 for every 1,000 pieces of French there were 16,000 pieces of Irish sold’.5 Among the most notable townlands that retained the tradition of handloom weaving into the twentieth century were Ballydugan, Bleary and Clare.6 They lie astride a main road from the mill town of Gilford that diverged at Ballydugan into a pair of roads running to Lurgan and Waringstown respectively. For administrative purposes they were defined from the seventeenth century as townlands in the parish of Tullylish in the Upper Half of the Lower Barony of Iveagh in the county of Down, and after the creation of the Poor Law Unions in 1839 they were assigned to the Electoral Division of Tullylish in Lurgan Union (although the town of Lurgan itself lay in the neighbouring county of Armagh). After 1898, as a result of the new Local Government Act, they became part of Moira Rural District Council.
This information is essential for tracing population data from 1901 and 1911 census returns (the only surviving census returns), and the printed census abstracts that provide figures for every townland from 1841 to 1926. The table illustrating population change (Table 12.1) shows not only the total number of inhabitants but also the total of inhabited houses. While decline in the population of a townland may indicate the emigration of its younger generation, the vacating of houses indicates the disappearance of whole families.
The most obvious comment contrasts the increases of both population and housing stock until the peak census year of 1861, with the rapid decline that did not end even with the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. At the outset it is surprising to realise that over the period of the Great Famine in the late 1840s, when County Down lost more than 11% of its population, this district lost no more than 104 people out of nearly four thousand inhabitants. Indeed, the losses in terms of both houses and inhabitants can be attributed to one of the three townlands, Clare, which lost 315 inhabitants and 42 houses while Ballydugan and Bleary gained between them 111 people and 37 houses. The same trend continued in the following decade, 1851–61, when the total number of houses rose by 51 to an all-time peak of 700 while the population fell by 77. While 40 more houses appeared in Bleary, Ballydugan got 15 and Clare lost 4; Bleary’s population increased by 57 but Ballydugan lost 8 and Clare 126. By 1861 the density of population in Bleary had reached almost a thousand to the square mile whereas that of Clare barely exceeded five hundred. Since Bleary and Clare belonged to the same landlord and all three were managed by the same agent, the difference cannot be attributed to his policy. It is worthwhile, however, to examine the structure of landholding.
Population change based on census returns. Inhabited houses in square brackets. Acreage and valuation from the printed Valuation of Tenements for Lurgan Union in Co. Down (1864)
| YEAR | BALLYDUGAN | BLEARY | CLARE | TOTAL |
| 948 acres £1,305 valuation |
911 acres £1,275 valuation |
1,334 acres £1,741 valuation |
3,193 acres £4,321 valuation |
|
| 1841 | 1,175 [192] | 1,263 [214] | 1,403 [248] | 3,841 [654] |
| 1851 | 1,198 [219] | 1,351 [224] | 1,188 [206] | 3,737 [649] |
| 1861 | 1,190 [234] | 1,408 [264] | 1,062 [202] | 3,660 [700] |
| 1871 | 1,061 [207] | 1,298 [228] | 819 [167] | 3,178 [602] |
| 1881 | 885 [189] | 976 [209] | 606 [135] | 2,467 [533] |
| 1891 | 763 [174] | 913 [202] | 488 [113] | 2,164 [489] |
| 1901 | 579 [136] | 783 [182] | 409 [100] | 1,771 [418] |
| 1911 | 516 [127] | 722 [170] | 380 [99] | 1,618 [396] |
| 1926 | 462 [109] | 589 [146] | 315 [80] | 1,366 [335] |
Characteristic of those districts in mid-Ulster that specialised in the weaving of fine linens was the high percentage of householders who held their land directly from a landlord. The phenomenon had its origins in the prosperous period enjoyed by handloom-weavers in the mid-eighteenth century. Many landlords saw their intermediate tenants profit by subletting to handloom weavers who competed for small-holdings and paid their rents with regularity. Whenever these leases came up for renewal, the landlords seized the opportunity to cut out the middlemen by letting every smallholding to its immediate occupant.7 This process was most marked in County Armagh, where a landlord commented in 1803:
Proprietors find it in their account to let land in small parcels, as the weaver will pay for just what suits his own convenience, in the vicinity of a good market town, much more than could be afforded for a large farm, the rent of which is to be made by the business of agriculture.8
The legacy of such a policy was very difficult to reverse as long as the linen industry continued to provide the cash to pay the rent. In this district in County Down, for example, farms remained much smaller than the national average. In 1861 the relative figures were as shown in Table 12.2.
Size of farms in Bleary, Ballydugan and Clare as compared to Ireland as a whole
| 1-5 acres | 5-15 acres | 15-30 acres | over 30 acres | |
| Three townlands | 38% | 40% | 16% | 6% |
| Ireland* | 15% | 32% | 25% | 28% |
* Source: Crotty, R.D., Irish Agricultural Production: Its Volume and Structure (Cork, 1966), p. 351.
The average size of holdings in this district was just under ten acres but two-thirds of the tenants had farms smaller than that. On the other hand, only eighteen farms exceeded thirty acres in size: ten of them were in Clare townland whereas, by contrast, Ballydugan had only two. These discrepancies may be accounted for by the success or failure of family strategies that had left some farming families better equipped to deal with economic change.
The Valuation Records distinguish between tenants and subtenants (see Table 12.3). Tenants held their farms directly from their landlords and the legal system encouraged them to believe that they had certain basic rights against these landlords. In their turn, however, they did not concede that their undertenants had legal rights against them. By 1864, the date of the Valuation, the subtenants actually outnumbered the tenants, although only about one third of all the tenants kept subtenants. In some cases subtenants were members of the same family, often sharing the same long, low cottage, but in others surnames were scattered so randomly throughout the district that the community must have had a long history of accommodating cottierweavers who paid rents in cash from their earnings at weaving because they possessed no land. The number of subtenant cottages on each holding varied from one to sometimes as many as seven, but there were a few remarkable exceptions. Robert Urey of Clare had sixteen and Leonard Uprichard of Bleary had thirteen but William Wells of Bleary had forty subtenants on his property. We should not, however, jump to a conclusion that all subtenants were packed on to marginal land or around the tenants’ farmyards (although there were examples of both phenomena in this community), because in the case of William Wells’s subtenants, many of them occupied good sites around a road junction complex in Bleary.
Such was the landholding structure in this district when the population statistics began their headlong plunge. In the half century that separated 1861 from 1911 County Down lost one third of its population and a fifth of its houses. This community lost more than half of its total population as it fell from 3,660 to 1,618 while the housing stock fell by two-fifths, from 700 to 396. It was dealt an immediate and severe blow in the early 1860s by the appearance of new powerloom factories during the linen boom caused by the American Civil War and its cotton famine. Whereas County Down lost 6% of its population in the 1860s and a further 11% in the 1870s, this community lost 13% in the 1860s and a further 22% in the 1870s. A quarter of its housing stock disappeared in those twenty years. Valuation revision books indicate that they were almost all the houses of subtenants, the homes of families of landless labourers leaving the district. Yet the families that had lived in the cottier houses could have accounted for no more than three-quarters of the migrants and so the remainder would have been drawn from the children of the small farmers. A lesser factor was the amalgamation and the readjustment of holdings brought about by changes in family circumstances, usually after the death of a patriarch. During the 1880s and the 1890s the haemorrhage continued at twice the county level. In the 1891 census a note explained the decline from 614 to 444 people (137 to 115 houses) over the previous decade in the neighbouring townland of Ballinagarrick: ‘The decrease is attributed to reduced employment for handloom weavers.’
Landholding structure
| BALLYDUGAN | BLEARY | CLARE | TOTAL | |
| TENANT FARMERS | ||||
| Over 50 acres | 0 | 1 | 4 | 5 |
| 30-49 acres | 2 | 5 | 6 | 13 |
| 15–30 acres | 14 | 13 | 19 | 46 |
| 5–15 acres | 41 | 35 | 39 | 115 |
| 1–5 acres | 51 | 41 | 19 | 111 |
| less than 1 acre | 10 | 11 | 19 | 40 |
| TOTAL | 118 | 106 | 106 | 330 |
| SUBTENANTS | ||||
| House and land | 3 | 2 | 2 | 7 |
| House and garden | 14 | 6 | 10 | 30 |
| House only | 95 | 138 | 84 | 317 |
| TOTAL | 112(46) | 146(45) | 96(30) | 354(121) |
| GRAND TOTAL | 230 | 252 | 202 | 684 |
Note: Figures in parentheses denote the number of tenants owning these subtenancies.
The survival of the original census returns for 1901 permits a more detailed survey of the textile industry in the district.9 Even after the great decline of weaving, linen workers still occupied three out of every four houses and averaged more than two to a house. There are, however, significant variations between the number of people engaged in the linen industry in the three townlands (Table 12.4).
The most densely populated townland, Bleary, also boasted the greatest number of weavers. Indeed, it had so many weavers that its prosperity was bound up with that of the cambric weaving trade. Clare, on the other hand, was the most extensive townland with the smallest population after 1851. Yet in 1841 its population had been the largest. It lost 340 people, however, and 46 houses over the next two decades, indicating that its farming structure was most vulnerable to the changes brought about by the Famine. In general, whereas townlands engaged in agriculture lost large numbers of both people and houses, the experience of both Bleary and Ballydugan suggests that weaving townlands were much more resilient. The corollary is that those rural townlands whose population suffered least in the Famine period were weaving townlands. Over the whole period 1841–1926 Clare suffered the heaviest losses, totalling three-quarters of its population and two-thirds of its housing stock. Some few inhabitants were employed on the bleachgreens along the River Bann. In general Ballydugan illustrated a mixture of the characteristics of the other two. The Blane family organised putting-out work to the cambric weavers but it is probable that the damask workers of both Bleary and Clare were serviced from Lurgan.
Numbers engaged in the linen industry, 1901
| BALLYDUGAN | |
| Of 579 people living in 136 houses, 211 workers from 96 of these houses | |
| BLEARY | |
| Of 783 people living in 182 houses, 350 workers from 152 of these houses | |
| CLARE | |
| Of 409 people living in 100 houses, 110 workers from 56 of these houses | |
| TOTAL | |
| Of 1,771 people living in 418 houses, 671 workers from 304 of these houses | |
Textile skills of the community according to the 1901 census
The structure of the textile skills in this community can be learned from an analysis of the 1901 census (Table 12.5).
It is a pity that the constable who supervised the census in Ballydugan was not as consistent as his fellows in Clare and Bleary in ensuring that weavers distinguished themselves as either ‘cambric’ or ‘damask’ weavers. Nevertheless, as many as 405, or two-thirds of all weavers, described themselves as cambric-weavers while one-sixth were damask-weavers. It is probable that most of those who described themselves merely as weavers were cambric-weavers: damask-weavers would have been more likely to distinguish themselves from the more common cambric-weavers. In cambric-weaving women just outnumbered men but damask-weaving engaged twice as many men as women. Before the introduction of mill-spun yarn in the mid-1820s women had concentrated on hand-spinning the yarn. Tradition had asserted that weaving was too heavy a job for them but, like cotton-weaving, cambric-weaving was not so strenuous and the introduction of the flying shuttle about 1825 relieved the exertion of throwing the shuttle by hand. In this community three hundred women were weavers in 1901 but only thirty-two engaged in other textile roles and, of these, fifteen were dressmakers and one a milliner: no-one then was engaged in embroidery except for three ‘veiners’ in the town-land of Bleary. Among the householders in this district who were not engaged in the linen industry, three-quarters (118 out of 158) described themselves as ‘farmers’ while another sixth were ‘labourers’; the others comprised three shoemakers, two teachers, two grocers (one a cambric manufacturer), two carpenters, two carters, a mason, a cattle-dealer and a roadsurfaceman.
Before the next census was taken in 1911 a significant change had taken place in the composition of those engaged in the textile trades in this district. Christopher Blane of Ballydugan and his son James had established two new textile enterprises: a hem-stitching factory and a Swiss embroidery school. The Blane family were relative newcomers to the district for they had purchased a farm of some 15 acres in 1854. Family tradition claims that James Blane established a cambric manufactory in 1865. The 1901 census records that his son Christopher, then aged 74, was both a family grocer and a cambric manufacturer, putting out work from his home. In 1907 the valuation officers noted that Christopher Blane had completed developments that had increased the valuation of the buildings on his holding to £36 and by 1914 the addition of another four blocks had raised the valuation further to £83.10 These premises were to house hemstitchers as well as a warping room for preparing the yarn beams for the weavers in their homes. They also included, however, the first school for Machine (or Swiss) Embroidery in Ireland. This school was established in 1910 with the active encouragement of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction to introduce the manufacture of machine embroidery in order to employ the handloom weavers and hand embroiderers whose livelihood was being undermined by powerlooms and machinery embroidery from Switzerland.11 The valuation officers recorded that the school had eight embroidery machines, hand-operated, and was lit by electric light ‘manufactured on other premises’. The designer and teacher was a Swiss, Hans Siefert, who gave his age as 25 and condition as married to the 1911 census-taker, when he was a boarder with a local farmer in Ballydugan. In 1915 the following description was given of the school at Ballydugan and another at Maghera subsequently founded:
Distribution of textile skills of the community according to the 1911 census
These schools are well designed, light and airy buildings, offering pleasant conditions for work. No motive power is required other than that provided by the worker. The worker sits at one end of the machine, which is operated by hand and foot. The enlarged design is mounted on a board, and the operator follows it, point by point, with an indicator which operates a pantograph and moves the long frame holder containing the handkerchiefs, which are held in position by metal frames. In the six and three-quarter yards machine as many as 234 handkerchiefs are embroidered simultaneously. The needles, pointed at either end, with an eye in the middle, are held by clips in a frame which moves to and fro on wheels. The 234 needles pass through the handkerchiefs at the precise points required, and are seized by corresponding clips at the other side, which slide back, pulling taut the threads. The operator moves the pantograph indicator to the next point of the design, and, by the movement of a lever, the frames containing the needle clips repeat the operation. The needles are threaded, and the thread knotted and cut automatically by a beautiful and cunningly-devised machine.
These schools have been very successful. Before they were started there were scarcely a dozen of these machines in Ulster. Now there are, I am informed, something like 140, and we are well on the way to capture the industry, and thus provide employment for our own workers.12
The scale of the changes induced by the enterprise of the Blane family is illustrated by a comparison of the census returns for 1901 and 1911 (Table 12.6). The total number of cambric weavers (comprising all those describing themselves simply as ‘weavers’) fell by 25% from 509 to 382, affecting both men and women to the same extent. At the same time, however, the number of damask weavers in 1911 would have remained almost the same as in 1901 except for a loss of fifteen men that was peculiar to the townland of Clare. It is worth noting also that of all the 477 inhabitants who described themselves as weavers, 64 or 13% had reached retirement age: this provides some indication of the rate of decline that could be attributed to the ageing of the community. The impact of the new Blane enterprise can be assessed from the increased numbers in the relevant trades: there were ten more handkerchief veiners, ten more hemstitchers, eight embroidery workers, and six employed in the stitching factory.13 While thirty-four of them were women, however, only four were men. In general, therefore, the new enterprises catered for women while men would have had to seek employment in the spinning mill at Gilford or on the bleachgreens along the River Bann that flowed through the southern townlands of the parish.
In the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum a replica of one of the handloom weaver cottages from Ballydugan has been erected to exemplify the style of housing that the weavers had developed. In order to understand the distinctive quality of this housing it is valuable to consider it in the national context.
James Donnelly in his study The Land and the People of Nineteenth Century Cork used census returns to argue that ‘for the farming classes, these years [1851–91] formed an extraordinary era in home construction — one of the best indications of their increased material welfare.’ The figures he published for County Cork are shown in Table 12.7 (percentages in brackets have been added by him),14 along with comparable figures for County Down.
Although some dissimilarities between the two counties are striking, notably the overall scale of losses and also the percentage of fourth-class housing in 1841, we are conscious that the percentage figures for each class are converging towards 1891. They show that fourth-class housing was fast disappearing and that after 1851 third-class housing was giving way to second-class housing while the percentage of first-class housing was steadily rising. The question is, however, whether or not these changes add up to the claim for ‘an extraordinary era in home construction’ although there can be no doubt that they indicate that the material welfare of the population was improving.
The method used for the classification of houses had been set out first in the report of the 1841 census:
House construction in Counties Cork and Down, 1841–91
| FIRST-CLASS | SECOND-CLASS | THIRD-CLASS | FOURTH-CLASS | TOTAL | |
| COUNTY CORK | |||||
| 1841 | 3,001 (2.5) | 20,309 (16.7) | 37,304 (30.7) | 60,896 (50.0) | 121,510 |
| 1851 | 3,624 (4.3) | 24,464 (29.0) | 39,860 (47.4) | 16,197 (19.0) | 84,145 |
| 1861 | 3,945 (5.1) | 26,552 (34.5) | 35,196 (45.8) | 11,165 (14.5) | 76,858 |
| 1871 | 4,325 (5.8) | 29,318 (39.4) | 24,621 (33.0) | 16,135 (21.7) | 74,399 |
| 1881 | 4,937 (7.3) | 31,507 (46.3) | 27,079 (39.8) | 4,561 (6.7) | 68,084 |
| 1891 | 5,520 (8.8) | 35,668 (57.2) | 19,184 (30.8) | 1,887 (3.0) | 62,259 |
| COUNTY DOWN | |||||
| 1841 | 1,451 (2.2) | 21,826 (33.5) | 27,838 (42.8) | 13,987 (21.4) | 65,102 |
| 1851 | 2,210 (3.8) | 26,352 (45.0) | 27,757 (47.5) | 2,114 (3.6) | 58,433 |
| 1861 | 2,642 (4.6) | 28,114 (49.0) | 25,246 (44.0) | 1,304 (2.3) | 57,406 |
| 1871 | 3,234 (5.5) | 32,048 (55.0) | 18,791 (32.0) | 4,270 (7.3) | 58,343 |
| 1881 | 3,795 (6.8) | 32,561 (58.7) | 18,437 (33.0) | 662 (1.2) | 55,455 |
| 1891 | 4,344 (9.0) | 29,760 (61.0) | 14,305 (29.0) | 332 (1.0) | 48,741 |
The value or condition of a house, as to the accommodation it affords, may be considered to depend mainly on — 1st, its extent, as shown by the number of rooms; 2nd, its quality, as shown by the number of its windows; and 3rd, its solidity or durability, as shown by the material of its walls and roof. If numbers be adopted to express the position of every house in a scale of each of these elements, and if the numbers thus obtained for every house be added together, we shall have a new series of numbers, giving the position of the house in a scale compounded of all the elements, i.e. their actual state. We adopted four classes, and the result was, that in the lowest, or fourth class, were comprised all mud cabins having only one room; in the third, a better description of cottage, still built of mud, but varying from two to four rooms and windows; in the second, a good farmhouse, or in towns, a house in a small street, having from five to nine rooms and windows; and, in the first, all houses of a better description than the preceding classes.15
Although this statement clarifies the intentions of the organisers of the census, the instructions set out for the enumerating constables were liable to provoke a variety of results. The criteria were defined for the enumerators as shown in Table 12.8.16
Criteria for census enumerators, 1841
| (Column 6) | WALLS: ‘If walls are of stone, brick or concrete, enter the figure 1 in this column; if they are of mud, wood, or other perishable material, enter the figure 0. | |
| (Column 7) | ROOF: ‘If roof is of slate, iron, or tiles, enter the figure 1 in this column; if it is of thatch, wood, or other perishable material, enter the figure 0. | |
| (Column 8) | ROOMS: Enter in this column: | |
| for each house with one room only | the figure 1 | |
| for houses with 2, 3 or 4 rooms | 2 | |
| for houses with 5 or 6 | 3 | |
| for houses with 7, 8 or 9 | 4 | |
| for houses with 10, 11 or 12 | 5 | |
| for houses with 13 or more | 6 | |
| (Column 9) | WINDOWS IN FRONT: State in this column the exact number of windows in front of house. | |
| (Column 10) | Tot the figure you have entered in columns 6, 7, 8 and 9, and enter the total for each house in this column. | |
| (Column 11) | CLASS OF HOUSE: | |
| When total in column 10 is: | Enter: | |
| 1 or 2 | “4th” | |
| 3, 4 or 5 | “3rd” | |
| 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 or 11 | “2nd” | |
| 12 or over | “1st” | |
When this system is applied to the Ballydugan, Bleary and Clare community, the results are as shown in Table 12.9. This classification is of little value for our comprehension of the quality of the housing because it conceals the major factor of the durability of the houses as defined in terms of the material used in the construction of the house. This information, as we have seen, is available in the details collected for the classification of the houses and is readily tabulated. It throws a completely new light on the whole system of classification. Although the criteria laid down in 1841 suggest that mud houses were relegated to the third and fourth class, an analysis of this community’s housing reveals that more than half of the ‘mud and thatch’ houses were second class in 1911 while two of them were graded first class, indicating that they each contained at least seven to nine rooms and had at least eight windows in the front of the houses. Three-quarters of all the houses in the district were still thatched. By 1911, too, very few of the ‘mud and thatch’ houses had provided themselves with a permanent roof, which was likely to be made of corrugated iron fitted over the thatch to provide insulation against both cold and sound (see Table 12.10).
Application of house classification criteria to Ballydugan, Bleary and Clare for the years 1901 and 1911
| FIRST | SECOND | THIRD | FOURTH | TOTAL | ||||||
| 1901 | 1911 | 1901 | 1911 | 1901 | 1911 | 1901 | 1911 | 1901 | 1911 | |
| BALLYDUGAN | 9 | 12 | 91 | 87 | 35 | 27 | 1 | 1 | 136 | 127 |
| BLEARY | 4 | 8 | 105 | 90 | 72 | 69 | 1 | 3 | 182 | 170 |
| CLARE | 8 | 8 | 68 | 72 | 23 | 17 | 1 | 2 | 100 | 99 |
| TOTAL | 21 | 28 | 264 | 249 | 130 | 113 | 3 | 6 | 418 | 396 |
| (5.0) | (7.0) | (63.0) | (63.0) | (31.0) | (28.0) | (0.7) | (1.5) | |||
At once several discrepancies are apparent between the 1901 and 1911 figures (Table 12.11). The most significant is the considerable increase in the number of ‘mud and thatch’ houses and the even larger decline in the houses of brick or stone with a thatched roof. This condition is most obvious in Bleary, where the figure for ‘brick or stone and thatch’ fell from 67 to only 6 inside ten years. The most probable explanation consistent with the census returns is that many houses in the 1901 census were wrongly described as ‘brick or stone and thatch’ and that this error was rectified by the enumerators in 1911. This suggests that mud houses could look as durable as stone houses to the untrained eye.
Classes of houses related to construction materials, 1911
| MUD AND THATCH | MUD AND PERMANENT ROOF | BRICK OR STONE AND THATCH | BRICK OR STONE AND PERMANENT ROOF | TOTAL | |
| First | 2 | 0 | 0 | 26 | 28 |
| Second | 131 | 9 | 48 | 61 | 249 |
| Third | 103 | 0 | 8 | 2 | 113 |
| Fourth | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| TOTAL | 242 | 9 | 56 | 89 | 396 |
| (per cent) | (61.0) | (2.0) | (14.0) | (22.0) |
Construction materials used in houses according to census returns
| MUD AND THATCH | MUD AND PERMANENT ROOF | BRICK OR STONE AND THATCH | BRICK OR STONE AND PERMANENT ROOF | TOTAL | ||||||
| 1901 | 1911 | 1901 | 1911 | 1901 | 1911 | 1901 | 1911 | 1901 | 1911 | |
| BALLYDUGAN | 74 | 68 | 1 | 5 | 41 | 26 | 20 | 28 | 136 | 127 |
| BLEARY | 102 | 123 | 1 | 3 | 67 | 6 | 12 | 38 | 182 | 170 |
| CLARE | 40 | 51 | 1 | 1 | 43 | 24 | 16 | 23 | 100 | 99 |
| TOTAL | 216 | 242 | 3 | 9 | 151 | 56 | 48 | 89 | 418 | 396 |
| (per cent) | (52.0) | (61.0) | (0.7) | (2.0) | (36.0) | (14.0) | (14.0) | (22.0) | ||
Another apparent discrepancy concerns the houses built of brick or stone with a permanent roof of slate or metal. The number had increased from 48 to 89. The explanation, however, is that these new houses were built between the two censuses of 1901 and 1911 as a consequence of the Labourers (Ireland) Acts of 1883 and 1906. After the Local Government Act of 1898 the new Moira Rural District Council assumed responsibility for the housing of labourers in the Tullylish electoral district that comprised, among others, the town-lands of Ballydugan, Bleary and Clare. Early in 1900 the Council met landlords of twenty applicants for labourers’ cottages and allotments and when they found that ‘in the majority of cases the [immediate] landlords refused to put the house in repair and provide sanitary accomodation’, the councillors decided to formulate an improvement scheme.17 Their ledger for the Labourers’ Acts reveals that by the end of 1910 they had completed 129 houses in their rural district, of which 41 were in the three townlands: 10 in Ballydugan, 27 in Bleary and 4 in Clare.18 Although the 1911 census records that the 26 (sic) houses built in Bleary and owned by Moira Rural Council were all rated in class 2, this fact shows up in any comparison of the census classifications. It is not altogether surprising, then, that the census compilers in both 1901 and 1911 collated the second class and third class figures for each county. They had outlived their usefulness and were no longer a guide for those intent on improving housing conditions in rural areas.
The new labourers’ cottages, with their allotments ranging in size from a half to one acre, were available only to labourers. Yet they were built by contractors using the same kinds of materials and techniques that were being used to build new two-storey houses for the wealthier farmers. It was at this time, for example, that cement blocks began to be used in house construction while mass production was increasing the range and variety of clay and metal fittings and pipes. In contrast the occupiers of the ‘mud and thatch’ houses had no way of improving their houses to any significant extent without demolishing them and rebuilding in the new style. How then can we explain the regular transfer of third class houses into the second class which had been continuing since the Famine? The only factor that must have changed to any considerable extent is the number of rooms in each house – the original houses had either been extended or, more probably, internally subdivided. Alan Gailey has drawn attention to:
the growth in internal subdivision throughout the nineteenth century. Apparently this was the outcome of a desire for greater privacy in sleeping arrangements, but it involved growing specialisation in the uses to which space was allocated within the dwelling. Separation of some of the multiple social and economic functions of the traditional kitchen was part of this same process, giving rise to the concept of the parlour or ‘room’ in farmhouses all over Ireland. It is another matter to try to detect the motivations underlying these changes. Certainly, changing attitudes to the quality of family life during the nineteenth century are involved.19
It is significant that Donnelly chose to support his claim that the late nineteenth century represented ‘an extraordinary era in home construction’ for the farming classes by pointing out ‘that substantial dwellings with five to nine rooms (second-class houses in the language of the census) rose by 76 per cent between 1841 and 1891’. Gailey’s explanation for ‘the growth of internal subdivision’, thereby increasing the number of rooms in cottages, undermines Donnelly’s assertion.
Unless similar investigations are made into other handloom-weaving districts there is a danger that this study will be used to generalise about the social and economic effects of the decline of handloom weaving on Ulster communities. It should be remembered, however, that this paper concentrates on a community that was engaged in weaving cambric for handkerchiefs and damask for tablecloths: its most significant characteristics are the scale of the participation of women in weaving and the number of tenants with families engaged at the loom. In contrast it is probable that the social structure and the participation of women may have been different in the Ballymena area where handloom weaving survived into the twentieth century. It would be interesting also to apply the same exercise to districts where the shirt and underclothing trades were engaged in putting-out work, such as Donegal and Londonderry, as well as districts in Down and Donegal that were famous for embroidery: these skills were practised by women and so they were assets in a community where there were fewer opportunities for men. Comparative studies should help us to understand the significance of the factors that determined why and how some communities were involved in textile crafts while others were not.
The study of communities provides a valuable methodology for local and regional historians. It integrates and focuses many disparate studies. It enables us to compare and contrast their characters and experiences. A wide range of sources can be used to broaden and deepen the investigation. Although many local historians have used provincial newspapers few have investigated the legal cases to discover the tensions within the community. How much can be learned from the records of the local board of guardians, the town commissioners and later the district councils? Valuable evidence about the community can often be uncovered from government reports or ‘blue books’ as well as the journals and annual reports issued by government departments such as the Local Government Board.
And it is at this level too that we have to examine local politics and the relationships between the religious sects.20 It is not difficult to understand why in the Ballydugan district in the decade 1910–19 two halls were built by the Ancient Order of Hibernians as well as a third Orange Hall. Local people will know the background to their construction and the names of the individuals who organised local politics. An intimate knowledge of such grassroots politics would deepen our understanding of the contemporary crisis in Ulster.
1 First published in Ulster Folklife 39 (1993), 1–14.
2 Solar, P.M., ‘The Irish linen industry’, Textile History 21, 1 (1990), 71.
3 Ure, A., Philosophy of Manufactures or An Exposition of the Scientific, Moral, and Commercial Economy of the Factory System of Great Britain, 3rd edition, ‘continued in its detail to the present time, by P. L. Simmonds’ (London, 1861, reprinted New York, 1969), p. 591. The superscript ‘00s’ stand for ‘hundreds’: 2600 indicates that each ell (= 45 inches) width of cloth contains as many as 2,600 warp threads – very fine indeed.
4 Ibid., p. 599.
5 Ibid., p. 600.
6 I knew about the handloom-weaving trade in Ballydugan and Bleary and I added Clare because, like them, it had such a large population in 1841. I overlooked the townland of Corcreeny which borders on Bleary: I had lived there for six years without being aware of its weaving tradition.
7 Crawford, W.H., ‘Landlord–tenant relations in Ulster 1609–1820’, Irish Economic and Social History 2 (1975), 13–14.
8 Coote, Sir C., A Statistical Survey of the County of Armagh (Dublin, 1804), p. 137.
9 The original census returns for both 1901 and 1911 are available for public inspection at the Reading Room of the National Archives, Bishop Street, Dublin. Microfilm copies of the 1901 census for the six counties of Northern Ireland may be examined now at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, 66 Balmoral Avenue, Belfast, BT9 6NY (hereafter PRONI) under the reference MIC/354.
10 PRONI Valuation Revision Books VAL/12A/3/71 p.16 and VAL/12B/21/8E, numbers 108a & b.
11 Fletcher, G., ‘The problem of small industries with special reference to machine embroidery’, Journal of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland 14, 4 (July, 1914), 695–9.
12 Fletcher, G., ‘Ireland’s industrial opportunities’, Journal of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction 15, 3 (April, 1915), pp. 482–3. The first paragraph of this quotation was taken word-for-word from the paper detailed in footnote 11.
13 It is probable that an equal number of Blane employees lived in the townland of Ballinagarrick which bordered on Ballydugan.
14 Donnelly, James, The Land and People of Nineteenth Century Cork (Cork, 1975), p. 243.
15 Report of the Commissioners appointed to take the Census of Ireland for the year 1841, H.C. 1843, XXIV, xiv.
16 Transcribed from Form 1B – House and Building Return, Census of Ireland, 1901. This layout was adopted for the 1881 census and was used also for 1891 and 1911. Previously, since 1841, particulars had been filled in under the same headings by the enumerators but the classification had been left to the civil servants employed at headquarters by the Commissioners.
17 PRONI LA/54/2F/1, Minute Book of Moira Rural District Council: Minutes re Labourers (Ireland) Acts, 237–8, Thursday 25 January 1900.
18 PRONI LA/54/12E/1, Labourers’ Acts Ledger of Moira Rural District Council, 1900–15.
19 Gailey, R.A., ‘Some developments and adaptations of traditional house types’, in O Danachair, C. (ed.), Folk and Farm (Dublin, 1976), p. 69; see also the same author’s Rural Houses of the North of Ireland (Edinburgh, 1984), especially Chapter 9.
20 See, for example, Fitzpatrick, D., Politics and Irish Life 1913–21: Provincial Experience of War and Revolution (Dublin, 1977).