Cavan is famed for its many lakes and the source of the River Shannon, known as the ‘Shannon Pot’, which is located in West Cavan. Its main towns are Cavan itself, Virginia, Ballyjamesduff, Bailieborough, Cootehill, Kingscourt and Belturbet.
The county was planted under the Ulster Plantation scheme in 1610, leading to huge changes in the population make up and urbanity of the county. New towns such as Virginia and Bailieborough were established, and existing settlements such as Cavan town itself and Belturbet were incorporated and planted. Indeed, Cavan town was the first Ulster town under the Plantation scheme to be incorporated and receive its charter, in November 1610.
The famine did not affect all of Ireland in the same way. Suffering was most pronounced in western Ireland, particularly Connaught, and in the west of Munster. Leinster and especially Ulster escaped more lightly.
There were several distinct kinds of agriculture present in Ireland at the time of the famine. The farmers in the east depended upon cereal crops, while those in Ulster grew flax. Only in the small farms of west of Ireland, and in parts of Munster, was the potato in a monopolistic position. It is estimated that at the eve of the famine 30% of Irish people were largely or wholly dependant on potatoes for their food. Thus, when the Blight struck it was these people who had nothing to fall back on. In Connaught some have estimated that as many as 25% of the population died.
Those who lived nearer to large cities had more access to imported goods. Although food was exported as usual from Leinster in 1844 and 1845, there was a net import of almost a million tons of grain by 1847. However, these imports naturally reached those nearer to the cities and these are in the east and south. Dublin, Belfast and Derry escaped with almost no effects at all, while Cork and Wexford were relatively better off than their rural environs. It was the inland and especially the western areas that could benefit least from the food of the cities. Given the fact that potatoes are notoriously hard to transport in any case, it would be difficult to get potatoes to Connaught even in a non-famine situation.
The Great Famine in Cavan
The population of Ireland on the eve of the Famine stood in excess of 8 millions. The population of Co. Cavan alone was just short of 250,000 – nearly five times its present population. The reasons for this demographic ballooning, which had occurred in the space of little over a century, can be traced to the availability of the potato which provided food security for peasant farmers with little land of indifferent quality.
The population of Ireland on the eve of the Famine stood in excess of 8 millions. The population of Co. Cavan alone was just short of 250,000 – nearly five times its present population. The reasons for this demographic ballooning, which had occurred in the space of little over a century, can be traced to the availability of the potato which provided food security for peasant farmers with little land of indifferent quality.
In 1825 the cottage linen industry collapsed in the face of mechanised production in factories near Belfast, many areas of Ireland, including Co. Cavan, experienced widespread destitution. Ireland lacked industries which could have absorbed surplus agricultural populations, as was the case in the north of England. However there was a growth in urban populations as towns, including Cavan and Cootehill (amongst others) attracted settlers from their rural hinterlands in search of greater though non-existent prosperity of the towns who were confined to unhealthy yet extensive shanty-towns on their peripheries.
The response of the authorities of the time to the successive destruction of the potato crop was wholly inadequate. It was not the responsibility of a government to provide for its poor. If there was any responsibility it was on the part of the pauper to behave thriftily and thus keep the wolf of destitution from his miserable cabin door.
The system of land tenure, based on landlordism, has often been blamed for the Famine. It did not cause it, but the response of Cavan’s proprietarial class, whether absentee or resident, was shamelessly ambivalent. Their tenantry belonged to a different, subservient orbit whose duties comprised the provision of rent so that their overlords could pursue lives of leisure, ease and indolence .
In Co. Cavan there were some truly inhuman acts of heartlessness. One of these was the eviction of tenants in Mountnugent, researched and described by Patricia Darcy. In September 1847 the tenants of a number of adjoining townlands were evicted from their cottages which were then demolished. No quarter was given to the aged or the infirm who were all equally cast upon the caprices of nature. Other tenants were warned not to give them shelter or assistance. This incident was particularly horrifying because it was spurred by the greed of a number of Irish land-speculators. The tenants who were the object of this inhumanity had not even been remiss in the payment of their rent.
The famine did not cast a pall of universal misery affecting the whole of the people of Ireland. Some areas were badly hit, while neighbouring parishes escaped fairly lightly. Amongst the first areas to be affected by the Famine in Co. Cavan was Blacklion and its vicinity, through which starvation and disease cut their deathly swathe; yet the neighbouring parish of Glangevlin was only lightly touched. Those who were already poor and badly-fed were most vulnerable to the food disruption and attendant diseases, and those who came into contact with them, like doctors, were also prone to fall victim to the lethal cocktail of viruses that escaped from the Famine’s Pandora’s box. Others whose positions in society allowed them to eschew contact with the teeming masses, who could afford better food, enjoy more favourable hygiene and heating, were insulated from its effects.
The population of the county fell by nearly 29 per cent between 1841 and 1851. Part of this was due to starvation-and-disease-induced mortality. A significant part was also due to emigration to England and America, a haemorrhage which was to continue late in to the next century.
The Famine also had its impact on the landscape, leaving as its architectural legacy a handful of gaunt poor houses that could never shake off their initial associations with want and destitution. There were also the cottages abandoned by their occupants. These often were preserved in their increasing dereliction by the notion that they were haunted by the spirits of those who had once dwelt there. Quite a number of minor roads throughout the county were also constructed by emaciated human beings in return for paltry wages and food rations.
Cavan’s population fell from 243,158 in 1841 to 174,064 by 1851.
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