Settlement and Survival on an Ulster Estate. The Brownlow Leasebook, 1667-1711.
Author: GILLESPIE, Raymond (Editor)
Belfast: Public Record Office, 1988. lxvi, 181 pages. Illustrated. Paperback.
The Leasebook of Arthur Brownlow casts a shaft of light on what is otherwise a dark age in the evolution of modern Ulster society. Compiled between 1667 and 1711 for Brownlow’s estate around the town of Lurgan in County Armagh it illuminates a wide range of the most important themes of the period. The origins of the linen industry, the growth of towns such as Lurgan, Lisburn and Belfast, the relations between landlords and tenants, the experience of the native Irish and the little documented settlement of the late seventeenth century Ulster by Scots and English are all dealt with in its pages. The leasebook, with its description of the landscape and buildings provides a vivid insight into the realities of rural and urban life during a period for which material documenting the development of Ulster Society is scarce.
ISBN: 0905691113