Maynooth - towards a community profile 1750-1911

The thesis is about communities in Maynooth from the mid-eighteenth-century to the early twentieth-century. It looks at the worker within the community and focuses on three areas of the town - Carton demesne, Maynooth town itself and the seminary of St. Patrick’s College Maynooth. Employer-employee relationships, job descriptions, status, wage levels, length of service, gender ratios, recruitment and mobility are explored particularly in relation to the servants and workers of Carton demesne and those of St. Patrick’s College. A profile o f Maynooth town emerges through an examination of its population, housing, property ownership and economic and social activity. Change over time and the nature and level of interaction between three employment loci is explored. Certain groups or ‘communities of interest’ emerge, some of which operate on separate levels to others. They are the servants of Carton demesne and those of St. Patrick’s College who are not of the locality and who are bound by rules and regulations. However these groups are indirectly linked to the wider community by co-workers from the locality who enter and leave these separate worlds on a daily basis, such as the labourers from the Duke of Leinster’s cottages. The community of Maynooth town to some extent forms a central community that feeds into that of Carton demesne and St. Patrick’s College and at the same time it is shaped by their influential presence. It also endeavours to operate independently of them sometimes to greater or lesser degree of success over the period