Although no records exist, Major Charles Robert recalls that his father employed two people, a secretary and an office boy to help in his job as agent.

Life in the house.

Back home in Hamwood however, he employed far more people. The 1901 and 1911 censuses give a very clear picture of life in the house. The Hamwood estate contained 8 houses (including the main one) in 1901 and 9 houses in 1911. All of these houses were used for servants of the Hamilton family. Of these residents 28 were protestant (including the Hamilton family) and 15 were Catholic. This was a reflection of the general tendency of landlords to import their servants (added to this was the fact that the majority were not born locally.)

By 1911 this figure had almost reversed, as 24 of the total residents were Catholic while only 15 were protestant. Again this reflected a broader trend whereby landlords found it increasingly difficult to find suitable servants. Nearly all of the houses contained families with both father and son, mother and daughter working for the Hamiltons. Interestingly, in the space of these ten years only one of the houses contained the same family. Records of Dunboyne primary school children whose parents worked in Hamwood, going as far back as 1868, show many different second names again indicating how frequently the servants changed.

These servants included a cook, a kitchen maid, footmen, coachmen, a pantry boy, a stable boy, a butler, a dairymaid, a groom and many labourers gardeners and housemaids. It is evident that despite its comparatively small size, the Hamwood estate was every bit as vibrant as most other big houses.

This is especially interesting as landlords were at the time, facing increasing financial difficulty and many were forced to sell off their estates. Gerald Francis Charles opinion on this matter was, that while it had to be accepted that selling off was inevitable for most landlords, he felt that those representing landlord’s interests had not done enough. As major Charles recalls they got a ‘very raw deal’. The Hamiltons themselves did not sell off very much land ( Griffith’s valuation survey shows they had just over 320 acres in Hamwood) , but they did however suffer at the hands of the land commission losing nearly 500 acres in Co. Westmeath.

Conclusion

This leads us to ask the question ; how did the Hamiltons survive when so many did not?

There are many reasons for this. Firstly it must be remembered that the Hamiltons were not landlords in the strictest sense. Most landlords did not , like the Hamiltons, have a supplementary income. This meant that while rents went down they were able to fall back on this income instead (especially since they worked for the duke of Leinster, one of the most prosperous landowners in the country). However the duke himself ran into financial difficulties and it is for this reason that the Hamiltons probably owe their survival to the flexible nature of the job of land agent ( even working in England for brief periods).

1  2  3  4  5   6  7  Next Page