LOCATIONAL PATTERNS AND TRENDS
WITHIN THE PRE-FAMINE LINEN INDUSTRY
WILLIAM J.
SMYTH
Department of Geography
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the industrial
revolution in England was manifested in an increasing trend towards
spatial concentrations of manufacturing industries. The textile industries,
in particular the cotton and woollen industries, were in the vanguard of
the revolution and the regional concentrations of manufacturing in Lancashire and Yorkshire bore avid testimony to the asserted demands of
the new factory system. Economies of scale, industrial linkages and
division of labour, as well as the power demands of sophisticated machinery, all argued for locational concentrations during this period. Factories
replaced craft workshops as the common mode of production; legislation
in the form of Factory Acts replaced tradition and apprentice contracts
as the regulator of social and economic conditions within the new system.
By 1840 the manufacturing of cotton and woollen cloth in Britain had
become almost exclusively a highly captialized factory-based industry
and steam had replaced water as the chief source of power 1 .
The technology and capital which had revolutionised the English cotton
and woollen industries was diffused much more slowly into the neighbouring Irish linen industry which was still dominated by hand-looms in 1840.
Difficulties in adopting power driven machinery to the delicate task of
producing high quality linen as well as a different social and economic
climate served to retard the introduction of t h e new industrial system
and its eventual acceptance might better be described as a transformation
rather than as a revolution. By the late 1830s the bulk of Irish flax was
l>eing spun in factories but it was not until more than a decade later that
machinery began to triumph over the hand-loom weaver 2 .
The structural differences which existed between the Irish and contemporary British textile industries create a different set of problems
for anyone engaged in a study of locational patterns within the early
nineteenth-century linen industry. The location of the English cotton
97
98
SMYTH
and woollen factories can bo determined with relative ease and precision
from available cartographic and written sources, but the homes of handloom weavers remain indistinguishable from those of their neighbours
who were not engaged in the industry. Furthermore, factory wage-books
and reports of official inspectors find no counterpart among a peasantry
which was largely illiterate and neither capable of, nor interested in,
preserving detailed records of their work. Unfortunately, few of the
written records of merchants who bought the cloth have survived and so
yet another possible source of information is unobtainable.
In his analysis of the Lancashire cotton industry in 1840, Rodgers 3 was
able to draw upon the detailed and comprehensive returns of the factory
inspectors. The returns of 18384 contain vital statistical data on the
number of textile factories, their power supply (both water and steam),
the number, sex and age of their employees for each parish in the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The purpose of this, and subsequent surveys, was to ascertain the location of, and conditions within,
the textile factories, but this data, gathered for legislative purposes.was
to provide an invaluable source in locational analyses of the nineteenthcentury British textile industry. The usefulness of this data-source rests
on the fact t h a t by 1838 the British cotton industry was very much a
factory-based operation and so an inspection of factories gave a very
complete picture of the industry as a whole. Such was not the case with
the Irish linen industry. Thus the factory returns of 1838 show that there
were only 40 flax spinning nulls in Ireland while there were 169 and 1S3
in England and Scotland respectively; a fact which misled Kane, a contemporary observer, into thinking that the Irish linen industry was
infinitely smaller than its British counterpart 5 . In reality, however, the
official survey referred to only a very small proportion of what was still
essentially an industry carried on in the homes of the weavers and spinners.
Consequently, a potentially valuable statistical source is rendered almost
useless with respect to any analysis of the Irish linen industry in the preFamine era.
Other sources must therefore be employed in any study of the linen
producing areas in Ireland. Leister" has constructed a map of the chiei
flax spinning and weaving areas based on the qualitative evidence of
Arthur Young who toured Ireland in 177b. 1777 and 1778. This necessarily
generalized m a p indicates that although the growing of flax and spinning
of yarn was common throughout most of Ulster and Connaught, the chief
concentration of spinning and weaving was to be found in north-eastern
Ulster in the counties of Down. Antrim. Armagh and to a lesser extent in
DeiTy and Donegal. Many other travellers, such as the Halls, Keid and
Kohl 7 , who traversed Ireland in the first forty years of the nineteenth
PRE-] AMIN1-: LINEN INDUSTRY
99
century, substantiate the general impression portrayed by Leister's map.
These accounts combined with more detailed and precise, though still
largely qualitative, records of a number of Parliamentary Commissions 8 ,
all indicate that the core area of linen production in pre-Famine Ireland
was the north-eastern portion of Ulster. These sources of qualitative
evidence give invaluable insights into the social and economic conditions
prevailing within the industry (the Weavers Report of 1840 is especially
useful in this regard) but the very nature of their data precludes any
attempts at locational analysis comparable to Rodgers's treatment of the
Lancashire cotton industry.
Statistical sources are not completely lacking, however, and in particular
reports of the Board of Trustees of the Linen Manufactures in Ireland.
1711-182S, and the Censuses of 1831 and 1841, all provide vital quantitative data. The reports of John Greer 9 ,1784 and 1804, and those of James
Corry, Secretary to the Linen Board, referring to Ulster Linen Markets
in I 8 I ( ) . 1S20 and 1821 10 are particularly useful. These reports contain
statistical information on the value of linen sold weekly at every brown
linen market as well as giving figures for the average number of weavers
who attended these markets. Thus it is possible to construct, for the years
of these reports, maps showing not only the location but also the size of
the various official markets in which brown or unbleached linen was sold
by either the weavers themselves or small middle men. Figure 1 indicates
that by 1803 the most important linen markets were located in the centre
and eastern part of the province of Ulster 11 . Armagh, with average weekly
sales totalling £4,000. was the largest market and it was followed in order
of importance by Dungannon, Belfast, Lisburn and Lurgan. An imaginary
triangle linking Belfast. Dungannon and Armagh would have embraced
the core area of linen marketing and in addition would have indicated
the region which had been the traditional heartland of the industry from
the seventeenth century. These leading markets were confined to either
the Lagan valley or the Lough Neagh centripetal drainage system from
which lowland corridors radiated into eastern Ulster, Leinster and Connaught. It was the accessibility permitted by these corridors which was
to prove at least a partial key to the success of the markets.
The reports of the Linen Board refer to the marketing, rather than the
manufacturing, sites of the industry and they do not provide detailed
statistical data regarding areas of production. However, it is possible to
extrapolate from the given information and argue that in an era when
communications were difficult and railways non-existent most weavers
must have lived within a ten mile radius, or walking distance, of the market
which they attended. The marketing and major production areas may,
therefore, be regarded as co-terminal and although linen was undoubtedly
HID
BROWN
SMYTH
LINEN
MARKETS
1803
Figure I.
woven throughout most of Ireland on an ad hoc basis, no other area equalled north-eastern Ulster in respect t o the intensity of weaving and the
investment of capital.
Thus, even in the prc-factory stage, the Irish linen industry did exhibit
a strong regional concentration which was comparable in some ways to
the contemporary English textile industry.
Figure i indicates t h a t
counties Down, Antrim and Armagh formed the core area of linen production and as such the statistical evidence substantiates other impressions
based on more qualitative sources. By 1S03. the inland centres of Dungannon and Armagh were much more important market centres than
Belfast which was destined to dominate the whole industry in the post1830 era of factory production. For the moment, however, Belfast was
more concerned with cotton than linen production. The pattern of produc-
PRE-FAMINE LINEN INDUSTRY
l"l
tion in 1803 was largely a reflection of the social and economic inheritance
of this part of Ulster. It was in this heartland that landlords such as
Brownlow of Lurgan had offered encouragement, early in the seventeenth
century, to the incipient linen industry by means of favourable leases
to weavers and sponsorship of markets. Furthermore, the arrival of a
number of Huguenot families in the 1690s had contributed to the growing
sophistication of the local industry. By 1700, the Lagan valley and northi-rn Co. Armagh had been established in the role of an innovation centre
for the linen industry and indeed the area continued to play this role
into the present century 12 . The advent of the factory system in the nineteenth century and the locational pattern it assumed was a direct outgrowth
of this socio-economic heritage.
The census reports of 1831 and 1841 substantiate the locational pattern
inferred from the map of linen markets at the beginning of the century.
The greatest concentration of those employed in linen manufacturing
was to be found in the counties of Antrim. Down. Armagh and Deity,
but this area did not have an exclusive monopoly of textile production.
In 1841. a total of 694.262 individuals were returned as being engaged in
textiles, including cotton, woollen and linen, and of these 388,032 were
located in Ulster 13 . Clearly domestic textile production formed an important ingredient in the economy of pre-Faminc Ireland as a whole, but
only in Ulster was it characterised by large numbers of full-time weavers
and spinners, by capital investment in processing activities such as bleaching, and by a well developed marketing structure. Such details would be
clouded by the statistical data of the censuses if they were to be utilized
in isolation.
Moreover, one cannot demarcate with detailed accuracy the location of
the linen operations within north-eastern Ulster, for, unfortunately, the
manuscript enumerators' books for the 1831 and 1841 censuses no longer
exist. It is therefore impossible t o trace individuals as can be done by
those researchers working on Britain and one must be content with the
published aggregate employment statistics for counties, parishes and
larger urban centres. A further weakness emerges when one is dealing
with this data-source in so far as not all of those who were engaged in the
linen industry were returned as such hi the census.
The particular
characteristics of the domestic linen industry meant that many, perhaps
the majority, of those employed in it also had other occupations. Small
fanners, tenants with conacre and landless agricultural labourers all used
occasional weaving to supplement the seasonal or longer term fluctuations
in their other activities. Many of these were returned as farmers or labourers rather than weavers in the census 14 . Thus, although the census data
is undoubtedly valuable, it can at best only substantiate the general
102
SMYTH
picture gleaned from other sources. At worst, its statistics may induce a
false sense of security into the research.
Fortunately, however, a valuation of land and property in every part
of Ireland both rural and urban, was begun in the late 1820s 15. This
valuation was initiated in order to provide a basis for a Poor Law taxation
system and it was to be carried out in conjunction with the production of
the first detailed maps of Ireland on a scale of six inches to one mile.
Although this valuation scheme was abandoned before it was completed,
it did cover most of the country and so there exists both a detailed cartographic and a written record of property in Ulster for the 1830s. Individual
buildings and land were assessed t o establish the tax their owner should
be liable to pay and written assessments exist for all buildings valued at
more than £5. This was important in regard to the linen industrv because,
although there were only forty establishments classified as linen factories
by the 1838 factory inspectors, there did exist a large number of other
mills which, although essential to linen production, did not come within
the frame of reference of the Factory Acts, as they were small in size and
were not engaged in spinning or weaving. These mills which were noted
by the valuators were primarily bleaching or beetling mills engaged in
finishing the linen cloth, and scutch or flax mills engaged in preparatory
treatment of the raw flax.
From the sources available it is possible to plot with accuracy the
actual location of these mills and to analyse some of the locational factors
involved in these essential branches of the linen industry — branches
that have for the most part been neglected by scholars. For the purpose
of this analysis, attention will be concentrated primarily upon Co. Armagh
which, as Figure 1 shows, was part of the core area of linen production
in t h a t it contained the markets of Armagh. Lurgan. Tanderagee and
Kichhill. with Newry on its south-eastern border.
Beetling mills and scutching mills were the two aspects of the linen
industry which had been subjected to power-driven machinery since the
eighteenth century and, although the mills were small in size, they did
herald the beginning of a trend, which, during the next century, was to
transform a domestic craft into a factory based industry. Flax scutching
mills represented an intermediate stage between agriculture and the linen
industry and their role epitomised the close links which existed between
these two branches of the rural economy. After the flax crop was harvested,
it was retted for some time in stagnant pools of water known as flax holes
in order to soften the hard outer stalks. When the flax had been dried ii
was processed through a scutching mill so that the fibres of flax could be
separated from the stalk and thus prepared for the next stage of the operation, spinning. Water-powered machinery had been employed in these
PRE-FAMINE LINEN INDUSTRY
103
flax mills from the mid-eighteenth century 1 0 and for the most part the
establishments were very small, being usually owned by some of the larger
fanners engaged in flax cultivation.
Bleaching or beetling mills, however, represented the final stages of
linen production and were much more capitalised than the flax scutching
mills. It has been estimated that in 1S00 it would have cost approximately
£3,000 to equip a bleaching yard and its mill". This bleaching process
was necessitated by the fact that linen, when woven, was in a brown state
and so it had to be treated with chemicals and stretched out in the sun
to whiten. In addition to this bleaching process, the linen fabric was also
passed between heavy rollers so that it attained a smooth sheen-like finish.
Tin- first of these water-powered beetling mills had been introduced into
Ireland in 1725 18 and by the nineteenth century they were primarily
concentrated on the rivers Lagan and Upper Bann in Co. Down and the
Callan river in Co. Armagh.
Using data gleaned from the Townland Valuation in conjunction with
(he first edition of the Ordnance Survey maps and the written memoirs
of the surveyors, it is possible to m a p with accuracy the location of beetling
and flax mills in Co. Armagh for the period circa 1830. Figure 2 shows
that within the county there were seventy-three flax mills and twentyfour beetling mills, thereby bearing avid testimony to the intensity with
which linen production was carried on in that part of Ulster. Closer
analysis reveals, however, that there was a fairly well defined pattern in
the location of these mills; they were not located indiscriminately within
the county.
The most striking aspect of Figure 2 is the very pronounced absence of
mills in the northern part of the county which borders on Lough Neagh.
It was in this lowland area that the linen markets of Armagh. Lurgan.
Tanderagee and Richhill were located and according to the 1831 census it
was here that the greatest concentration of weavers was to be found.
In essence, this lowland area was the core of linen weaving and spinning
in Co. Armagh, yet it was virtually devoid of both types of mills relating
to the linen industry. The explanation of this apparent paradox rests in
the fact that both types of mill needed water power to drive their machinery and the rivers meandering across the Lough Neagh lowlands lacked
sufficient velocity to provide this power. The Ordnance surveyors, for
example, noted in their memoirs that the parish of Montiagh. which fringed the southern shore of the lough, possessed only one mill (a corn mill)
and it was powered by wind rather than water for a local drainage scheme
had so lowered the water-table that water-power was impractical 19 . Thus
in their search for power, mill owners sought sites along the faster flowing
reaches of the rivers Callan and Cusher in particular, and the influence of
Kit
SMYTH
Figure 2.
PRK-IAMINH I.INKN
INDUSTRY
105
the linen industry was thereby extended southwards within the county.
A pattern somewhat similar to that documented by Kodgers for Lancashire
emerged, for he argued that few cotton nulls were to be found below the
500-foot contour. In Scotland Turner observed a linear dispersion of linen
mills along the Almond and Ericht rivers in Perthshire 20 , again illustrating
the influence which topography had on the location of early textile mills.
It is also apparent from the map that there was little mill activity on
the rivers Creggan and Cully Water which flow southwards from the
county watershed. It would have been technically possible to generate
power from these rivers but lack of accessibility hindered such a development. South Armagh was. in comparison with the northern part of the
county, an area wherein weaving and spinning were only very sporadic
activities, and in many respects this area represented the margins of the
l i s t e r linen industry. Cut off from the major linen markets, south Armagh
suffered from a lack of investment capital and it acquired onlv three
mills which were located on its northern periphery. Clearly, water-power
alone was not sufficient to attract mills to marginal locations.
Although most mills in Co. Armagh were located between 200 and boo
feet in elevation, further specialised locations m a y be observed. Thus,
of the twenty-four beetling mills in the county, twenty were located on
the Callan river, with three on the Cusher and one on the Camlough river
in the south-east. Alternatively, the Cusher river had thirty-two flax
scutching mills out of a total of seventy-three. However, as Figure 2 shows,
flax scutching mills were much more ubiquituous than their beetling
counterparts and. apart from the obvious dominance of the Cusher valley,
they were also to be found on the Rann. Rlackwater and Camlough rivers.
This locational pattern was a function of the power requirements of both
mill types.
The flax mills, which were small establishments employing onlv four
or five men. made smaller demands on water-power than the larger and
more capitalised bleaching establishments. Flax scutching was very much
an extension of agriculture and so the distribution of mills reflected not
only the availability of water-power but also the location of the chief
flax growing areas in the county. A survey carried out by the Linen Board
in 1796s1 indicated that the parishes of Mullaghbrack. Ballymore and
Loughgilly. which adjoin the river Cusher. were the chief flax growing
parishes in the county and it was sometimes argued that this area produced
the best flax in Ireland — hence the large number of mills along the Cusher
valley. The other more scattered flax scutching mills catered for the
needs of local flax growers in other parts of the county.
furthermore, because scutching was an agricultural process, it was
only carried on in the autumn and winter after the flax crop had been
UMi
SMYTH
harvested and retted. In this off-season period, farmers had not only
time to scutch their flax, they also could avail of the increased velocity of
the streams caused by the winter rainfall. Consequently, streams which
were relatively small and virtually dry in summer could not support beetling and bleaching concerns which were in operation twelve months of the
year, but they could support the seasonally operated scutching mills.
The Gusher river, which was subject to a heavy loss of potential waterpower during the summer months, had only three beetling mills compared
with its thirty-two flax scutching mills. The manuscript notebooks of the
Townland Valuation contain many references to problems caused by
shortage of water in the summer months, and if a mill suffered greatly
from this problem, its rateable valuation was correspondingly reduced.
William Atkinson, however, had a large cotton spinning and weaving
enterprise located in the townland of Lisdrumchor. on the upper reaches
of the river Cusher (Fig. 2). but in order to overcome the problem of
summer drought, he had installed a steam engine which he used for three
months of the year 22 .
In contrast to the seasonal regime of the flax scutching mills, an
industrial regime prevailed in the bleaching and beetling establishment>
which frequently worked fourteen hours a day. six days a week throughout the year. Consequently, the majority of beetling mills tends to be
confined to the upper reaches of the Callan river which had a greater
water-power potential than the Cusher river in the east. The Callan valley,
therefore, formed the axis of the bleaching section of the linen industry
in 1830 but this had not always been the case. In the 1730s, bleachgreens
had been established along the south-eastern shores of Lough Neagh 23
— an area which was linked to the sea by the Newry Canal in 1742. This
was in the heartland of linen production and the entrepreneurs thought
that it would be an ideal location by virtue of the fact that there was
plenty of water for waslung the linen and there was the prospect of easy
communications via the canal and the sea to the white linen market in
Dublin. Unfortunately, the experiment was short-lived, for there was
not sufficient velocity in the local streams to drive their mills and so they
had to yield to the more ideal sites on the Bann and Callan rivers.
A document written in 1795 by R. Stephenson, an employee of the Linen
Hoard, entitled A View of Co. Armagh, gives a detailed account of the
spread of the bleaching concerns up the Callan Valley2*. Stephenson noted
that the first bleachyard was established on the Callan river in 1743 and
by 1771 there were thirty-six bleachyards there, whitening £"1(12,750
worth of linen annually. At that time, ashes were frequently employed
in the bleaching process (chlorine was not discovered until 17.S5) and
Stephenson gives as an additional reason for the local ion of bleach-yards
PRE-FAMINE LINEN INDfSTRY
ln7
on the Callan the fact that turf for burning and providing ashes could
easily be obtained from the neighbouring uplands of south Armagh.
In an interesting social comment in the same manuscript. Stephcnson
noted that '. . . . few among Roman Catholics are head blcacheis in the
North, and still more extraordinary, on looking into this great manufacture
in Lister, which necessitated at least three million (pounds) starting to
carry it on. it is almost every shilling in the hands of Protestants. As it
is believed that there are not four bleachyards in the hands of Roman
Catholics, and those of little consequence when compared with the extensive works of their neighbourhood'".
This anomaly may be explained in part by the fact that until 1778
Catholics could not hold a lease on land for longer than thirty-one years
and so they would have been operating under a serious disadvantage in
acquiring land for a bleachgrcen and beetling mill. Thus there was
established within Co. Armagh in the eighteenth century a Protestant
supremacy in the more capitalised branches of the linen industry — a
supremacy which was to extend throughout the nineteenth century.
The natural advantages of available water-power and local turf supplies
thus encouraged the extension of bleaching activities into the Callan
valley from the traditional weaving area in the north of the county.
Figure 2 shows there were twenty beetling mills and six flax scutching
mills on a nine mile stretch of the Callan river and its tributaries and in
addition there were also three spinning mills, live flour mills, one paper
mill, one distillery and twelve com mills — a total of forty-eight establishments — on the same stretch 2 6 . Gribbon has stated that the Callan river
had the greatest density of mills in the province of Ulster 27 and as such
special arrangements were required to ensure that all of these mills could
obtain sufficient water-power when necessary. Consequently, many of
the beetling mills in the valley were located not on the river itself but on
adjacent mill races which often had small ponds for storing water as a
precaution against short term fluctuations in water supply 28 .
Not all crises of water supply could be avoided by the use of mill
ponds, however, for the usage of the Callan river was so intense that
some degree of formal co-operation among the mill owners had to be
attained. Consequently the Clay Lake Trust was formed in 1822 b y a
group of null owners 29 and the future supply and use of water in the Callan
river was regulated. However, there was still a finite limit to the amount
of power which could be generated from the river, and the spinning and
weaving factories established in the valley in the period after 1830 usually
augmented their power supply by means of steam engines 30 .
The search for water-power undoubtedly influenced the locational
pattern at early mill activity within the linen industry and this influence
ins
SMYTH
was still evident in the location of the first spinning factories in Co.
Armagh. The first power-driven spindles in the county were errected in
[806 by the firm of Nicholson. Kelly and Johnston at Bessbrook on the
Camlough river in the south-east 31 . In r S l i a son of the above Nicholson
errected another spinning mill at New Holland on the headwaters of the
Callan river and in the same year William McCruin creeled power spindles
near Milford. ten miles downstream on the Callan. These early spinning
mills employed a method of drv spinning and because of the inadequacies
of this process they could only produce a very coarse yarn suited to the
manufacturing of sailcloth. In 1S25. however. James Kay of Preston 32
developed a new method for the wet spinning of (lax and this new process
proved so capable of producing very fine yam that it virtually eliminated
domestic spinners over the next fifteen years. William Hudson adopted
this new method in his factory on the Camlough river in 1827 and his
example was followed by J. McKean of Darklcy on the Callan river 33 .
Water was the source of power employed in all these early spinning factories and eight years later the factory inspectors noted that there were
four such factories in Co. Armagh, all of which used water rather than
steam power 34 . Like the earlier drv spinning factories these new sites
were located in the southern part of the county rather than in the Lough
Neagh lowlands which had been the chief area for domestic spinning.
The initial attempt at power spinning in Co. Armagh was characterized
not by the establishment of factories in urban centres but by the continuation of what had been a pattern of rural mill activity. As Kric Lampard 35
remarked in reference to the English industrial revolution: 'the essential
fact is that industrialism, like so many other aspects of our culture, was
born in the country and only moved to the towns when well advanced in
years'. This locational pattern was largely due to the fact that many of
the entrepreneurs in the new spinning ventures were also engaged in the
bleaching side of the industry and so the new factories were built beside
the established beetling mills and made use of the same water supply.
Soon, however, steam was to replace water as the chief source of power 3 "
and factories built in the post-Famine period were freed from the restraints
of having to be located on a river. Consequently they gravitated towards
towns such as Lurgan and Portadown which could supply large numbers
of employees as well as transportation via the newly built railways.
In the second half of the nineteenth century the linen industry conformed more closely with the model of the English cotton industry in its
mode of production and organization. It. therefore, became more suscept
ible to measurement by tools such as the Factory Acts which had been
designed with the English model in mind. In addition the decrease in
the number of domestic weavers virtually eliminated what had been
PRE-FAMINE
LINEN
INDUSTRY
lu!t
an e a r l i e r source of confusion in i n t e r p r e t i n g t h e o c c u p a t i o n a l c a t e g o r i e s
of t h e c e n s u s . N e w p a t t e r n s a n d n e w s o u r c e s for r e c o n s t r u c t i n g t h e m
e m e r g e d in t h e p o s t - F a m i n e p e r i o d ; t h e y w e r e likewise a c c o m p a n i e d b y
n e w p r o b l e m s in t h e i r i n t e r p r e t a t i o n .
NOTES AND REFERENCES
I
'The returns of the Factory Inspectors', British Parliamentary
Papers, 1839,
vol. 42. This indicates that only 18% of the power supply of the English cotton industry was derived from water.
'' Ibid, 1839, vol. 42 indicates that in 1838 there were 40 flax spinning factories in
Ireland but no weaving factories. By 1850 there were 67 spinning factories and only
2 weaving factories ('Factory Returns', ibid., 1850 vol. 42).
3
II. B. Rodgers. 'The Lancashire cotton industry in 1840', Trans. lust. Br. Gcogr.,
28, I960, 135-153.
• ' R e t u r n of mills and factories', British Parliamentary Papers 1839, vol. 42.
5
R. Kane, Industrial resources of Ireland. Dublin and London, 1844, 320-321.
• I. Leister,"Landwirtschaft und agrarraumliche Gliederung Irlands zur A. Youngs',
Zeit.fiir Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziolagie, 10, 1962. 9-44, map 4.
T
Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, Ireland : Its scenery and character, London, vol. I,
1841; vol. 2. 1842: vol. 3. 1843.
" T h e linen trade of Ireland", British Parliamentary Papers, 1825, 5. 'Handloom
weavers report', ibid., 1835, 13. 'Handloom weavers report", ibid., 1840, 23.
' John (Ireer. 'Report of a tour of inspection'. I.men Board Minutes. 1817.
'" J. Corry, 'Report of the linen markets of Ulster, 1821. 1822", ibid., 1822.
II
Similar maps have been produced by A. R. Onne, Ireland, London, 1970, and
J. H. Johnson, The two Trelands' at the beginning of the nineteenth century', p. 224
in N. Stephens and R. Glasscock (editors), Irish geographical studies, Belfast, 1970,
11
\V. J. Smyth, The social and economic geography of nineteenth century Co. Armagh.
Ph.D. thesis. National University of Ireland, 1973, 69.
"CetlSUS of Ireland, 1841.
" T , VV. Freeman, Pre-Paminc Ireland, Manchester, 1957, 271.
" Town/and Valuation of Ireland, Manuscript Books for Co. Armagh, 1820s.
" C . Gill, The rise of the Irish linen industry, first edition 1925, reprinted Oxford,
1964.
" Ibid. 246.
'« Ibid. 51.
"Ordnance Surrey Memoirs, 1830, Co. Armagh. Montiagh Parish, Box 18, Royal
Irish Academy. Dublin.
«° Rodgers, op. cit.. 138. See also W. H. K. Turner. 'The significance of waterpowcr
in industrial location", Scott, geogf. Mag., 74, 1958, 98-115.
" R. Stephenson. List of Linetl Board premiums for flax growers, 1796, National
Library of Ireland, Dublin.
" Townland Valuation, op. cit.. Townland of l.isdrumchor, Bol. IB/212.
" W. Crawford, Four centuries of change, Craigavon Development Commission
publication, 1970. 2.
21
R. Stephenson, A view of Co. Armagh, 1795. Northern Ireland Public Record
Ollice.
M
Ibid.. '.
" S m y t h , "/.. cit., loo.
11(1
SMYTH
87
H. Gribbon, A history of walerpowcr in Ulster, Newtown Abbot, 1909, 157.
First edition six-inch Ordnance Survey map of Co. Armagh, sheet 18.
Gribbon, op. cil., 158.
30
'Factory Inspectors' returns', British Parliamentary I'apns 1857, vols. 3 and 1G.
" Gribbon, op. cit.. 93.
" G r i b b o n . op. cit.. 93.
" Ibid., 94.
34
'Return of mills and factories', op. cil.. 1839.
35
E. E. Lampard, Industrial Revolution interpretations and perspectives, Washington. 1957, 8.
30
In 1839 water supplied 111"",, of the power in the linen lartories of Co. Armagh.
In 1850 it only supplied 66% of the power (The returns of the Factory Inspectors',
op. cit.. 1839 and 185(1).
88
29
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I would like to express my thanks for criticism of this paper to Professor T. Jones
Hughes. University College Dublin and also for the helpful comments of the anonymous referee. A Travelling Studentship from the National University of Ireland
financed much of the research.