Allison,
I see that the advert was placed by the ?Incumbered Estates Commission? Sometimes called the Encumbered Estates Commission, later the Encumbered Estates Court. I can give you a little background to the function of that Commission.
During the 1800s many of the big landowners in Ireland borrowed or mortgaged heavily against the value of their estates. During the famine (the big famine years being 1847-49) many tenants couldn?t pay some or all of their rents. As a result many of the landowners then couldn?t repay their mortgages. Not only did the landowners thus face bankruptcy but the banks who had recklessly lent them the money, often against inflated valuations, also faced bankruptcy if so many mortgages were not honoured. (There are parallels with the financial crises in Europe and the US in recent years where mortgages were given to people unlikely to repay them, secured on properties of low or dubious value). So back in the early 1850s, the UK Government was faced with a potential major banking collapse and widescale bankruptcies all across Ireland. In order to try and manage the disaster, the Incumbered Estates Commission was created and authorized to sell off the land of the potential bankrupt landowners, at the best possible value. Such of the mortgages and debts that could be repaid from these monies would be, but the rest of the debts would be wiped clean. It was not a perfect fix but was a way of salvaging something from the disaster. (The Irish Government did more or less the same thing a few years ago, by creating a government body named NAMA to acquire and sell off the toxic assets of people who went bankrupt during the recent financial crisis. So history repeats itself.).
For the tenants actually farming or living on the Incumbered lands in the 1850s, in theory it didn?t make much difference. They just got a new landlord, and their original leases had to be honoured. Though in practice some of the new landlords did try to get tenants to leave so that they could try new farming methods. But for others it made no real difference.
So returning to this advert, it looks as though someone named Owen Neary had asked the Incumbered Estates Commission to sell the lands described in the advert, presumably because money was owed to him and wouldn?t otherwise be recoverable. The Commission had evidently agreed to his request and placed the advert. I take it that the Callan family were the owners of the lands being sold.
The Encumbered Estates records can be a very useful source of genealogical information. When each townland was being sold, an inventory was drawn up listing each tenant and saying what tenancy agreement they held. This information was of great relevance to would be purchasers. (Even today, if you buy a property with a sitting tenant, you need to know what terms and conditions they are there on). In the 1700s and early 1800s, 3 lives leases were very popular. In short, the lease lasted so long as the 3 people named in it were still alive. So where there was a 3 lives lease (as in this particular case, judging by the advert) the names and ages of the 3 persons are given in the inventory. Since many of the leases were agreed in the late 1700s, it can be a way of getting back another generation or two.
The Encumbered Estates records are on the findmypast site (pay to view). I think I have also seen some of the original Encumbered Estates inventories for Co Louth in PRONI (the public record office) in Belfast. National Archives in Dublin may also hold some of them.
Castletown, Tankardsrock & Balrigan are all townlands in Co Louth. You can locate them easily enough using Griffiths Valuation.
Elwyn
