An early 19th–century map of the “Earl’s Gift” Demesne
showing lands near the town of Donemana, Co. Tyrone, in the parish of
Donagheady and diocese of Derry has recently (2019) been repaired and
conserved. These lands were colourfully surveyed for the Hon. Revd
Charles Douglas by Robert Craig in 1830.
Glebe–houses (rectories, parsonages) and (historically) glebe lands
(farmland) were the residences of the parochial clergy in their
respective parishes, enabling them to easily and regularly provide
pastoral care to their parishioners and to be a visible presence in the
wider community. This deceptively simple statement belies the fact that
for over 150 years (to the 1830s), senior clergy of the Church of
Ireland were quite pre–occupied with the question of the availability of
glebes and glebe–houses as an incentive to clergy to reside in their
parishes. Like the churches, funds were also administered for glebe
purchase, and glebe–house building (and rebuilding), through the aegis
of the Board of First Fruits in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Glebe houses in rural parishes often had associated farm outbuildings
(offices).
Glebe house plans and particularly the drawings of the outlining and
associated lands are particularly scarce, when makes this particular
example all the more significant not just from a local history
perspective but also the in wider national context of assessing the
property ownership scope of certain members of the Established Church
clergy.
In this case, the Hon. Revd Charles Douglas (1791–1857) was the second
son of the 14th Earl of Morton. Ordained in the Church of England, he
came to Ireland as rector of the parish of Donagheady in the diocese of
Derry in 1825 and continued to serve there his death in 1857.
Clearly of significant independent means, but also benefiting from the
grant funds available, Douglas was enabled to commission a professional
surveyor, Robert Craig, to measure out his property, and draw the survey
map of the lands where he had laid out a house and planned demesne on
the former “Earls Gift Castle” estate.
This estate which originally extended to 1,000 acres was formerly
associated in the 17th century with Sir John Drummond who laid out the
original “Earls Gift Castle” and town of Donemana. But for this survey
map which provides visual evidence of the castle, associated farmyard
parish church, church lands and outlying areas, the association of over
95 acres of these lands with one Church of Ireland cleric might have
remained relatively unknown. Indeed the only parish history available in
the Library collection, published in 1979, by the Revd E.T. Dundas,
makes no mention of it.
The colour map depicts various field boundaries, and the location of
townlands, including Benown where the original parish church was
located, as well as the castle, farmyard with stables and other
outbuildings, landscaped garden and pleasure grounds. Immediately to the
north–east of these and connected by a road is the original parish
church. Today this building is a ruin, having been replaced after
disestablishment when the original had fallen into disrepair, in 1879.
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