Estate Records

Estate records, which include maps, rentals, letters, etc., are a useful source for both the local and family historian. However, they are not available for every area in the province. The North Antrim area lies within the lands originally granted to the Earl of Antrim. Due to growing debts, during the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the Antrim family sold off parts of their estate. The result was smaller individual landlords owning varying numbers of townlands, not always contiguous, scattered throughout the entire North Antrim area. Some such as Leslie, Montgomery and McNaughton had big houses with demenses. Others had less grand houses and some were not even resident in the area. The database below will allow you to see who were were the landlords of individual townlands throughout the area. The source of this information was the Griffith's Printed Valuation c.1860.

Click on this PDF file for a list of the landed estates within North Antrim. This map of Some of the landlords in the parishes of Ballymoney and Kilraghts will show the townlands within these parishes held by the Earl of Antrim c.1860 and those held by the Agnew, Batt, Cromie, Hutchinson, Leslie, and Montgomery estates. The blank townlands on the map were owned by a variety of other people.

Three of these estates, Agnew, Hutchinson and Montgomery have books of estate maps which show the extent and layout of the holdings plus the names of the tenants and the acreages that they rented. The acreages were in Cunningham acres - a Scottish measure. Cunningham acres need to be multiplied by 1.29 to convert them to English, statute acres. The Agnew and Montgomery maps were produced by James Williamson in 1788 and the Hutchinson maps by James Kane in 1805.  The townlands covered in each estate are listed in the tables below.

There are some other maps relating to these estates which I have not used here. The actual books of maps can be seen in PRONI, Belfast - Agnew (T/2309) Hutchinson (D/408) and Montgomery (T/1638/2). My thanks to PRONI for permission to use these maps and special thanks to Ian Montgomery of PRONI, who knows more about the Antrim estate than I ever will.

If you wish to find out if estate records are available for any of the landlords listed in the database uou can visit PRONI and use the Guide to Landed Estates.This guide is arranged firstly by county (Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone) and then alphabetically by landlord/estate. For each estate there is a description of the records found in PRONI with the appropriate main PRONI reference numbers. Additionally, for each county there are separate sections on maps and on the Irish Land Commission/Land Purchase Commission papers deposited in PRONI by Land Registry.

You can also use the PRONI eCatalogue - see an example.