Valentine Lawless, Lord Cloncurry, and his Landed Estates 1799-1845

Valentine Lawless, son o f Nicholas and Mary Lawless, was bom on 19 August 1773. He attended boarding school seminary in Portarlington and later progressed to school at Prospect House. He progressed to the King’s School in Chester and finally graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 1790, with a B.A.1 In 1799, on the death of his father, Valentine inherited the title Lord Cloncurry and the Lyons estate which contained the family home. It was situated in the barony of South Salt in north Kildare and amounted to 1,060 acres of prime agricultural land. It was located about three miles from Celbridge and ten miles from Naas. The estate bordered the Castletown estate of the Connolly family and the Straffan House estate owned by Arthur Henry. Valentine Lawless inherited additional lands at Cloncurry on the Kildare - Meath border and at Abbington in County Limerick as well as a large house, ‘Maretimo’ in Blackrock, County Dublin. The Lyons and Cloncurry holdings were later additions to the Lawless family property, as Nicholas Lawless had only purchased the latter in 1787 and the former in 1798 from the Aylmer family. This study concentrates on various aspects of Lord Cloncurry and his Munster and Leinster estates that are not referred to in either Cloncurry’s autobiography and Fitzpatrick’s biography. It will not dwell on Lord Cloncurry’s involvement with the United Irishmen or his imprisonment. The main focus will be on Cloncurry’s direct management of his three estates