A Short Digression On Townlands
The hierarchy of the sub-division of land in Ireland goes … county, barony, sub-barony, parish and finally townland. Today, there are 61,119 townlands in the whole of Ireland, 9,687 in N Ireland, 959 in Co Armagh and 1,285 in Co Down. Townlands are of Gaelic origin and pre-date the Norman Conquest.
-They were created for the purposes of administration and taxation. The guiding principle was that the agricultural productivity, and therefore the tax yield, of each should be roughly equal. Townlands in areas of rich soil such as around Poyntzpass are relatively small, whereas in rough, mountainous, hard-to-cultivate land they are much larger. They only began to be formally surveyed and have their boundaries defined after the Plantation.
The Moores Arrive
For a comprehensive account of the Moor family, see “The Moores of Drumbanagher” by John Campbell, BIF Vol 13, 2015
On 22nd July 1611, soon after Charles Poyntz received his initial grant of property at Brannock, King James I also granted the neighbouring Manor of Drumbanagher to Sir Garrett Moore as The Manor of Knockduff. It comprised the following townlands:
“Kilemodah alias Kilnebodagh, Demon, Drombancher, Lescomman, Kilry (1/3), Knockduffe alias Kilmanaghan, Ballineseorsagh, Cavan Icallon”.
From 1611 until the early years of the 19th century, the Moores of Drumbanagher had little direct impact on the development of Acton and Poyntzpass, as they did not own those villages.
Sir John Moore (1756-1834)
This John Moore was the fourth of that name to live at Drumbanagher; his father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all called John. He built a reputation as a caring landlord and an honest man.
In March 1799 Moore became MP for Newry, and in January 1803 he was appointed high sheriff of County Armagh.
However, he had his flaws – as we shall see later, his rather unsubtle use of the Drumbanagher Volunteers militia against Catholics celebrating midsummer in 1789 stirred up a hornet’s nest, much to the displeasure of Lord Charlemont. And although he was an enlightened landlord, he was not (if we accept the verdict of William Greig’s 1820 report on the state of the Drumbanagher estate) a particularly good custodian of the land.
As well as being a major landowner, Sir John Moore was also a banker. In 1807, along with Robert Macan (McCann) of Armagh and Newry, and Meredith Foxall of Killeavy, he founded the Newry Bank, in political and commercial opposition to the bank owned by Isaac Corry and John Ogle. Moore was a firm opponent the Act of Union of 1800, whereas Corry and Ogle supported it. Meredith Foxall died in 1815 and his interests in the bank passed to his father Joseph and his brother Thomas.
Moore is specifically mentioned in newspaper reports from about 1810 as one of the landlords prepared to accept tenants’ rents in banknotes rather than gold coin, indicating his growing confidence in the strength and stability of the banking system, and stating that this was making it cheaper for their tenants to pay their twice-yearly rent. Or perhaps, as a banker, he simply wished to ‘push’ the adoption of, and trust in, paper money as an enabler of commerce? In the light of subsequent events, he was perhaps a little over-optimistic.
The Newry Bank prospered at first. During the Napoleonic Wars, British trade with other countries had become restricted and exports from Ireland to England greatly increased, as did commodity prices. However, very soon after the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in June 1815, normal peacetime trading patterns were restored, and demand for Irish produce and goods greatly decreased. Ireland suffered a severe economic depression, and with it came the inevitable bad debts and bank failures.
On 27th March 1816 the London Chronicle reported
“The Newry bank of Messrs. MOORE, MACAN and FOXALL has stopped payment. Other failures are expected to follow in the North of Ireland”.
John Campbell writes
“It is not known whether John Moore was involved in the business from the outset or if he only became a director later for, apart from owning the premises in which the business was conducted, he does not appear to have taken any active part in its affairs. It is said that he became involved owing to having too much confidence in a friend and by allowing his name to be added to a list of directors of the bank. By the time John Moore became a director, the bank was already in a failing condition, and it seems likely that his name was added to that of Macan and Foxhall in the hope that the high regard in which he was held would be sufficient to restore confidence in the bank.
“Moore certainly had confidence in his partners as it is said that he did not look at the partnership papers before signing them. However, the bank’s state was beyond redemption, and it collapsed completely only a few weeks after John Moore had become a director. After the failure it was found that the deed of partnership was so drawn up that the creditors could not touch the Foxall estate.”
The failure of the bank led directly to John Moore having to sell the Drumbanagher estate, home to his family for over 200 years, to pay the bank’s creditors. After the publication of an initial brief advert on 3rd May 1817, announcing that the estate was to be sold, his tenants presented him with a formal written address, expressing their regret at his circumstances, and praising the beneficence he had always shown them.
On 7th July a public meeting of the bank’s creditors was held. While Moore and Macan were praised for voluntarily handing over the deeds to their respective estates, the Foxall family were castigated for refusing to surrender theirs. A unanimous motion approved the sale, by public auction, of all three Directors’ estates, to be held on 20th October. Most of the Drumbanagher estate was bought by Maxwell Close, as we shall see shortly.
After the loss of his estate, Moore was a broken man – he retired to Loughbrickland House, where he died on 21st May 1834 aged 77. The funeral procession took 5 hours to travel to Drumbanagher Church via Poyntzpass and was accompanied by 40-50 coaches.
His obituary in the Newry Telegraph on 30th May 1834 said:
“He was upright and benevolent of heart, just and honourable in all his ways…amid the wreck of his ample possessions…The feeling apparent at his funeral proved that although wealth was lost public esteem for a good and upright man had suffered no diminution.”