Griffiths Survey Co-tenants

thadiisgirl

I've found the online Griffiths Survey and accompanying maps to be invaluable in my family researches.

I do have a question regarding the frequent co-tenancies you come across though. Does anyone know how to interpret this co-tenant situation on Griffiths please? Were they relatives usually, or were co-tenancies handed down through the generations?

Thanks in advance for any comments.

pinkypinky

I've never seen unrelated people sharing a tenancy. Different surnames could just mean in-laws or cousins.

thadiisgirl

That's fascinating pinky - thanks. I've come across one marriage between the two families, but have been unable to link them directly..

These co-tenants still have (or at least had) descendants still in exactly the same spot as per Griffiths, as I've come across a couple of recent death notices - recent in the last half dozen years, that is.

It gets more and more interesting - so pleased I've found this forum!

CDfm

i didn't know there were co-tenancies

how did they work and did they give sucession rights etc

thadiisgirl

Hi CDfm

To be honest, I'm just assuming that the people 'appearing' to share a plot of land on Griffiths are co-tenants - I can't think of another explanation.
Anyway - any further info here would be very much appreciated.

In our case there was a 21 acre area, with three people named on it - my gg-grandfather was named as the person assessed for the highest tax out of the three, so I assume he held the lion's share of the 21 acres - again, I could be totally wrong in my assumptions...

No idea re succession rights etc - can you enlighten me?? I may have to come over and claim my family plot, if there are!!!!!!

Dun

Speaking from my personal experience, I've found lots of unrelated people sharing a plot number in GVT over the years. The way the plots were assigned seems to be rather arbitrary. I know my father's family have been on the plot they're on for at least 200 years, and in GVT they appear with 2 related families, and one unrelated family. I don't think you can safely make any assumptions without backup from other sources. It might be worthwhile checking out the cancelled land books (revisions) for more information on how the land was passed down through the years.

CDfm

The reason I am asking is to do with succession of sorts

some families were on the same land for years

i know that my families landlords in wexford were distant relatives and the county was not as badly affected by the famine as others

so i am wondering if tenancies could be inherited and also were subdivision practices common

Dun

The cancelled land books would more or less show the changes in land holders from GVT to the 1960s or 1970s, if that's what you're looking for. Certainly the "tenancies" were passed down in my lines, and subdivision was most definitely practiced.

Ostrom

These sound like rundale holdings, are they marked with a bracket around the group of tenants with a single lessor name? This practice was widespread before the famine, particularly in western counties, although is found in most counties to greater or lesser extents.

If this is rundale, there are many debates as to its origins, but it typically denotes a plot farmed in common and periodically divided into lots.

fehenry

They could have been rundale holdings alright but if the number of co-tenants listed by Griffith were less than a half dozen or so, I’d imagine that they referred to a single holding that was part sublet to cottiers.
My g great-grandmother had a middleman’s holding of twenty acres or so in Ballintaffy, near Kiltimagh, Co. Mayo in the lead up to the famine. She held this under lease from the immediate lessor and paid the rent directly to him.
However, she did manage to sublet parts of her holding to four cottiers after the first failure of the potato crops. Their rent payments to her plus the help they gave her on her land allowed her to keep them all from eviction during the terrible famine years.
Her landlord wasn’t concerned about this the sub-division of her land. All he wanted was his return from the land in question.
On the other hand, the Griffith surveyors looked at each household to determine its rateable valuation. Her cottiers were listed as co-tenants when the region (Kilcommon) was surveyed in 1856.
In my home region in east Mayo, the clachan settlements on rundale holdings generally had from 9 to 14 households- although many of them were not listed by Griffith as their rateable valuations fell below the minimum required.