Struggle and strife on a Mayo estate, 1833–1903

The Nolans of Logboy and their tenants

Michael Kelly

‘The role of local history in informing our understanding of the national story and making regional and chronological comparisons has increasingly been recognised. The Maynooth Studies in Local History have played an important role in this, publishing short works of consistently high levels of scholarship … One of the interesting findings of Kelly’s research is the universality of conflict between tenants and landowners in the late nineteenth century … [he] significantly contributes to our understanding of the land ownership movement in nineteenth-century Ireland’, Fionnuala Walsh, Family & Community History (October 2016).

‘This short study, full of insight and sensible judgements … provides an up-to-date and nuanced account of the political and social underpinnings of nineteenth-century rural Ireland’, John Broad, Landscape History (2015). 

‘The Maynooth Studies in Local History are one of the most significant publishing achievements in Irish History in the past quarter century … they are a triumphant demonstration of the value of the local approach [and] are illustrative, individually and severally, of the exemplary potential of the micro-study, and of the illuminative and illustrative quality of an approach that not just accommodates but provides a raison d’etre for a form of history that celebrates the diversity that underlies every generalisation that historians aspire to reach’, James Kelly, Studia Hibernica (2014).

'The Maynooth Studies in Local History have brought about a quiet revolution in Irish local studies, and have changed the larger landscape too. Working from fascinating and little-known sources, and mobilizing the resources of energetic and imaginative scholarship, an extraordinary range of subjects has been identified, illuminated and brought into focus. These 100 publications not only explore little known local episodes and phenomena; they constitute a major contribution to the mainstream of Irish history’, R.F. Foster, historian.