Pobul Uí Cheallacháin: Landscape and Power in an Early Modern Gaelic Lordship†

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper is a study of the Gaelic lordship of Pobul Uí Cheallacháin, Co. Cork, Ireland. It uses an interdisciplinary approach drawing on archaeological, historical, cartographic and toponymic evidence to reconstruct the political geography of the lordship, investigating how power was manifested in the landscape. In the medieval period, land within the territory was organised and allocated following Gaelic custom ‘time out of mind used’. When in the 1590s the lordship underwent a fundamental change with the surrender and regrant of land to the English Crown, the social relationships underpinning the lordship, and the manner in which they were expressed in the landscape, were reordered. The paper pays special attention to Gaelic land units, settlement and place-names, and explores how political changes occurring in the late sixteenth century in a broader Irish and European context impacted on the landscape and settlement of an individual lordship.