The estate maps of Trinity College: An introduction and annotated catalogue

Trinity College for long derived a large part of its income from a considerable landed estate which was widely dispersed in Ireland. According to a Royal Commission of 1905 the College's estates were distributed in sixteen counties and totalled around 200,000 acres.1 The bulk of this land lay in Kerry and Donegal but substantial blocks also occurred in Armagh, Fermanagh and Longford. Indeed the holdings in these five counties made up over three-quarters of the total area of college estates. In some counties the estates were scattered and divided to a high degree. The Kerry estates, for example, although collectively the most extensive, were markedly scattered and inter mixed, while in Limerick and Tipperary the college lands consisted of as many as twelve small and widely scattered parcels.2 Not only were the estates dispersed and fragmented but their organisation and legal position had by the end of the eighteenth century become very complicated owing to elaborate methods of sub-letting and frequent sub-divisions. Indeed so complex was their tenurial structure that the problems of transferring the holdings to the occupants after the Land Acts required intricate and prolonged investigation by a Royal Commission.3 Largely for these reasons the Trinity estates are a particularly difficult subject of study. However in this account, which is intended to serve essentially as an introduction to the estate maps, it is necessary only to adumbrate some of the salient features of the estates. One further outstanding characteristic which merits mention is the very varied quality of the estate land which ranged from rich, profitable areas in south-west Armagh to extensive tracts of bog and mountain in some of the wildest and remotest parts of Donegal and Kerry. Much the greater part of the estates was poor