With World Cup rugby the flavour of the season, the minds of rugby fans turn towards two well-known venues in Dublin - Lansdowne Road and the Shelbourne Hotel. Interestingly, Lansdowne and Shelbourne were the titles of the descendants of a remarkable Cromwellian official, entrepreneur and cheat named William Petty. Nowadays he would have many offshore accounts! Of humble origins, he became a doctor and was professor of medicine at Oxford at the age of 27 and professor of music at Gresham College London.
Adept at backing the winning side, he became surgeon-general to the Cromwellian army in Ireland. The confiscated Irish lands were to be given to the "adventurers" who had lent money to Cromwell and parcels were to be given, in lieu of pay, to 35,000 soldiers. To facilitate this, the land of 20 counties had to be surveyed. Petty, seeing a golden opportunity, volunteered his services as surveyor-general and with great skill and the use of 1,000 soldiers he completed the first accurate mapping of the country and the occupiers of its lands in 15 months.
This was the Down Survey - he "laid the lands of Ireland down"; hence the granting of the title Lord Landsdown to his great-grandson. His grandson had been ennobled with the title of Lord Shelbourne.
Kenmare area
Petty was given 3,500 acres of profitable - i.e. arable land as opposed to woodlands - in the what is now the Kenmare area.
Many of the soldiers given land in south Kerry did not want to transfer there, so they sold their grants to Petty for a pittance. By 1661, he held over 50,000 acres, all along the Kenmare Estuary. He also had estates all over Ireland, many of which he registered in other people's names - shades of modern-day banking practices. He was believed to have owned 270,000 acres of south Kerry alone at the time of his death.
Although he had been the trusted adviser of Henry Cromwell, the ruler of Ireland, he quietly sided with those who worked for the restoration of Charles II. As a reward he was knighted and given more land by King Charles. The so-called "unprofitable land" he made immensely profitable by cutting down the great oak forests to sell to the navy and to provide fuel for the furnaces of the iron and copper mines he developed. He even struck his own coins in 1666 and 1669! Like most parvenus, he aspired to social elevation. This he achieved by arranging the marriage of his heiress Ann to a son of Fitzmaurice, Lord of Kerry. Hence the family name held to this day is "Petty Fitzmaurice".
Sheen Falls
His original town was called Nedeen, now lost in the woodlands near the Sheen Falls Hotel (on the site of Lord Lansdown's Sheen Falls Lodge). The first Marquis of Landsdown moved the town to the north side of the river and named it Kenmare after his friend, Lord Kenmare of Killarney. It was built to a plan based on a triangle with diverging streets at some of the apexes. There was a large marketplace and many side laneways - just as in Killarney, also a planned or settled town.
There is a very ancient bridge (close to the town) known locally as Cromwell's Bridge, though that worthy never came closer to Kenmare (which had not yet been built) than Clonmel! So much for the veracity of folklore.
In more recent times the Sixth Marquis of Landsdown described happenings at Sheen Falls Lodge, now a superior hotel, near Kenmare. During the Civil War, the mansion was turned into a barracks by the Irregulars or anti-Treaty forces. The whole operation was completely correct; a room was set aside where the family deposited their most valuable and intimate objects. This room was securely locked.
Next day some 70 men arrived with their own beds and bedding. Everything was done in the best military style as many of the men had, like their pro-Treaty opponents, served in the British Army during the first World War. The detachment left after two weeks, leaving the house spotless and undamaged.
Rotting floors
Some months afterwards the flooring suddenly began to give way, and investigation revealed that the planks under their linoleum coverings were water-sodden and rotting. Seemingly some of the old soldiers, in their anxiety to vacate their quarters in "clean and good order", had indulged in what was known in military parlance as "general swabbing", requiring the use of copious amounts of water. All the floors had to be renewed by the Landsdown family.
Descendants of Petty still live in the area - in Derreen House on Kilmackilloge Harbour, across the Kenmare Estuary from Sneem and Parknasilla. The house's magnificent woodland gardens are open to the public during the tourist season.