Bantry House Papers, Special Collections, Boole Library, UCC
Projects: The papers support a number of important inquiries, including landlord and tenant relations between the 18th and 19th centuries in Ireland, the design and building of a country house, and considering the records of Richard White, individual commitment and testimony regarding the French Republic’s Expédition d'Irlande ("Expedition to Ireland") in 1796.
The Archive, designated as BL/EP/B, consists of the estate and
family papers generated by the White/Leigh-White/Shelswell-White family of
Bantry House, Bantry, Co. Cork. On the 20th May 1997 the owner of the Bantry
Estate, Egerton Shelswell-White, formally donated the Archive to UCC. The
archive contains the formal records regarding the legal, financial and general
administration of this large house and estate over a period of 300 years, and
also the more personal records relating to the lives and personalities of the
family who owned the estate. However not all of the original records have
survived. Due to a fire in the Estate Office in early 1900s a significant part
of the original collection was lost. Principally, there are no rental ledgers
for the 19th century. However there are Rental Sheets for 1840, 1856/57,
1865-1866 and 1881 which provide information for certain areas of the Estate.
Similarly very few records survive for the design and development of the
magnificent gardens at Bantry House. These were presumably destroyed prior to
the transfer of the archive.
By the end of the 18th century the Whites
held most of the land in Bantry and the Beara Pennisula, becoming the largest
landowners in this part of Cork. In 1796 Richard White was instrumental in
alerting the English Army Headquarters in Cork to the appearance of French ships
in Bantry Bay. He gathered intelligence of the enemy’s movements, organised
local resistance and opened his house, then known as Seafield, to the Army and
made it their Headquarters. He was rewarded in 1797 by being created Baron
Bantry. In 1801 the title Baron Bantry was advanced to Viscount and in 1815
Richard White assumed the title Earl of Bantry. Richard married Margaret Anne
Hare, daughter of the 1st Earl of Listowel in 1799. It was his son who, while
still Viscount Berehaven, laid the plans for the magnificent house and gardens
extant today. The White family throughout the 19th century intermarried with
other well known landed families including the Herberts of Muckross House,
Killarney and the Guinness family of Dublin.
http://booleweb.ucc.ie/index.php?pageID=261
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Westley
Forsythe. The decline of the landed estates system in county Cork, 1815-1914
UCC PhD dissertation, 2005.