Settlement desertion and landscape change in an Irish parish: Gleninagh, County Clare 1800 - 1915

Abstract

From 1845 to 1849 Ireland (then a British colony) suffered under a famine caused by the failure of the potato crop in successive years. Somewhat more than a million (out of a total population of 8.2 million) died of starvation or disease, and as many as twice that number emigrated. This article examines the effects of the Great Famine on an isolated rural parish in the Burren, a karst region in the west of Ireland. Strongly class-specific population depletion and settlement desertion left a visible imprint on a once crowded landscape. A clustered settlement pattern was replaced by one of dispersed farmsteads. Changes in landholding patterns, occupational structures and education are less readily ‘read+ from the landscape, but have had far-reaching implications for the development of rural Irish society.