Illinois Gov. George Ryan signed a bill in July that will ban MTBE from the state beginning in 2004. Ryan noted that the gasoline additive is suspected of contaminating groundwater in several states. The state's EPA will provide technical assistance and money to test drinking water for MTBE contamination.
The USEPA has issued stricter standards and tougher penalties for companies that threaten water purity and quality. In response, establishments ranging from water treatment facilities, aquaculture farms and paper mills are commonly investing in portable, multi-parameter instrumentation to meet monitoring needs. Select U.S. Aqueous Analytical Instrumentation Markets, a report by Frost & Sullivan, says the continuous products segment generated revenues of $127 million in 2000 and is projected to increase steadily to $171.5 million by 2007. Meanwhile, Frost & Sullivan presented awards to companies that have made a positive contribution to the U.S. aqueous analytical instrumentation industry. Those honored were Hach Co., Horiba Instruments Inc., Oakton Instruments, Rosemount Analytical Inc. and YSI Inc.
The Water Quality Association and the Water Quality Society are sponsoring a new career site for the water treatment industry. H2Ojobs.com will help WQA members fill job openings. Members may post openings free until Sept. 15. The regular cost for postings is $150 for WQA member companies ($300 for non-members). It began registering and posting jobs on Aug. 1. Ads are being placed in various publications as well as press releases and targeted mailings. H2Ojobs.com will be easily accessible three ways: directly through H2Ojobs. com, and via links from wqa.org and waterqualitysociety.org.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture have developed a new test based on IGEN International Inc.'s technology and used the test to detect potentially pathogenic E. coli O157 bacteria in creek water. In a report of their study, the investigators concluded the test appears suitable for routine screening of water samples, tracking the spread of bacteria in contaminated water supplies, and pinpointing sources of waterborne infections. The findings were reported in the July issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is amending the food additive regulations to provide for the use of ozone in gaseous and fluid phases as an antimicrobial agent on food including meat and poultry. This rule became effective on June 26. The action was in response to a petition by the Electric Power Research Institute, Agriculture and Food Technology Alliance, of Palo Alto, Calif.
Sta-Rite Industries, of Delavan, Wis., has acquired Vico Products Manufacturing Co., and Ultra Jet Plastics, of South El Monte, Calif., as well as Ultra Jet Canada, of Ontario, Canada. Vico/Ultra Jet is a leading manufacturer of spa and jetted tub pumps and fittings and has approximately 140 employees in California and 45 in Canada.
Bruce Babbitt, former Secretary of the Interior, will be the featured speaker at the general opening session of the Water Environment Federation's Annual Conference & Exhibition in Atlanta on Oct. 13-17. Babbitt served as Arizona's governor between 1977-1987. He was appointed to Secretary of the Interior by President Clinton in 1993. During his tenure, plans were made to restore the Florida Everglades and the California Desert Protection Act was enacted. Also, 2001 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate Takashi Asano, a water reuse expert, will speak at the session. Christine Todd Whitman, current USEPA administrator, has been invited to speak.
NBC's Today show on July 6 ran a news item concerning tap water quality and how to determine what's in the water. Jack Gillis, director of public affairs for the Consumer Federation of America, was interviewed for the story. He references NSF International and NSF-certified products throughout the interview. The website link for the complete story can be found at www.msnbc.com/news/596617.asp.
Mary Lou Retton, gold medal Olympic gymnast, will launch the IBWA 43rd Annual Convention and Trade Show as the keynote speaker on Thursday, Oct. 4, 2001, at the opening session. Retton rose to international fame by winning the all-around gold medal in women's gymnastics (the only American ever to do so) in the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles and additional silver and bronze medals. The IBWA show, "Thirsting for Excellence," will be held in Miami Beach, Fla., Oct. 4-6, at the Miami Beach Convention Center.
Applied Water Technologies Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Global Water Technologies Inc., has signed an agreement with York International Corp. to provide the AquaPhysics cooling water treatment technology and services through York for a Hilton Hotel. Global Water is an equipment and services supplier of cooling water and treatment services to power plants and process industries.
Non-carbonated bottled water is the fastest-growing beverage category in the United States. Behind private label waters, Pepsi's Aquafina is the top selling brand at U.S. retailers. For the year ending May 20, water sales topped $2 billion, up 18.5 percent from that period a year earlier, according to Information Resources Inc. Beverage Marketing noted the average intake of bottled water grew by 1.2 gallons to 18.2 gallons per person last year. Per capita consumption has jumped at least a gallon per year since 1995. In related news, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in July that it will not issue regulations for the bottled water industry regarding removal of Cryptosporidium from its products. The reasoning for the FDA's decision is largely based on the fact that the water sources used for bottled water, namely groundwater or municipally treated water, aren't likely to contain the protozoan.
Westlake Chemical Corp. and USFilter Operating Services have signed one of the chemical industry's largest industrial outsourcing agreements for water and wastewater treatment. The 15-year, multi-million dollar agreement calls for USFilter to operate, maintain and make capital improvements to the water and wastewater treatment units at Westlake's two ethylene plants and supply demineralized water to its styrene plant in Lake Charles, La. In other news, USFilter is supplying membrane filtration technology for the first large-scale microfiltration plant to be built in North Carolina. The $900,000 Memcor Continuous Microfiltration technology will treat nearly one million gallons per day for the town of Carthage. The plant is expected to begin operation in March 2002.
Chesapeake Utilities Corp. has purchased select assets of EcoWater Systems of Rochester (Minn.). With this transaction, Chesapeake makes its debut in the Minnesota water conditioning and treatment arena. Former owner Donald Lee will continue as a consultant during a transition period and then support the utility in various other operational roles.
In related news, Chesapeake has purchased Intermountain Water Inc. and Blue Springs Water, and thus entered the water conditioning and treatment and bottled water markets in Boise, Idaho. The two dealerships will be combined under Sharp Water of Idaho Inc. A similar entity has been created for dealerships the utility has acquired in Florida.
Lawrenceville, N.J.-based Envirogen Inc. was given a $500,000 grant by NSF International in mid-January to continue its work on remediation of MTBE, the fuel oxygenate. The grant supports further work by Envirogen on in situ remediation of MTBE contamination through biaugmentation and builds upon previous work by the company under NSF funding. In related news, Envirogen was awarded a contract to supply the U.S. Army with a Fluidized Bed Reactor (FBR) system. It will be used to treat groundwater containing the chemical perchlorate at the Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant in Karnack, Texas. The system will be installed this year.
Recent state tests of water samples taken from Greenville (S.C.) County neighborhoods show that its water, along with some of the residents, are contaminated with uranium. The state Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) tested 105 people who live in the Simpsonville and Fountain Inn areas. Of those tested, the agency said 94 had elevated levels of uranium. In February, DHEC tested about 50 wells after getting complaints about uranium contamination. After tests showed that several of those wells were unsafe to drink , many people resorted to drinking bottled water.
Second quarter profits more than doubled from a year earlier for Spokane, Wash.-based Itron Inc., a maker of analysis and collection equipment for the gas and water industries. The company reported net income of $2.6 million compared to $1.2 million a year earlier. Revenues climbed 17 percent to $52.9 million.
Nearly half of Marion County residents who use water provided by the Indianapolis Water Co. regularly use bottled water or filtered water instead of tap water, according to a survey in The Indianapolis Star. Thirty-eight percent of those surveyed for the paper and a local TV station rated the quality of their tap water as good or excellent. Thirty-nine percent said it was fair; 22 percent rated it poor. In other news, the city of Indianapolis has acquired Indianapolis Water Co. after it had been pursued by American Water Works.
The American Water Works Association board of directors has approved a new standard for the use of polyamide (nylon 11) coatings for the water industry. The new standard—AWWA Standard for Two Layer Nylon-11 Based Polyamide Coating System for Interiors and exteriors of Steel Water Pipes, Connections, Fittings and Special Sections (ANSI/AWWA C224-01)—is the first U.S. standard that governs use of polyamide coatings.
John Guest USA Inc., of Pine Brook, N.J., a manufacturer of food grade push-in fittings, valves and tubing, will be displaying its products at Hall A1, Stand 123, at the Drinktec-Interbrau 2001: World Fair for Beverage Technology, in Munich, Germany, on Sept. 20-27. The company has also promised to introduce some new products.
CSA's B125 Standards Committee has formed a task group to work toward development of a new standard for water treatment equipment in Canada. While still early in the discussion stage, the scope could possibly extend to cover inline, end-of-faucet and pour-through designs, according to Steve Ver Strat, leader for technical/regulatory affairs in the Access Business Group LLC (Amway) and chairman of the WQA World Assembly Division's Standards & Regulations Committee. The intended focus would be on structural integrity and material acceptability and would draw heavily on existing standards.
India will host the "Science and Technology 2001" international exhibition and conference in New Delhi on Oct. 29-31, 2001. It will feature Water India 2001, Environment India 2001, Industrial Automation India 2001 and Instrumentation 2001 under one roof. The exhibition will create a forum for some of the internationally acclaimed companies to exhibit their latest environment friendly technologies. The event will facilitate the establishment of clean indigenous manufacturing capacity in the country. It will provide a unique platform for the market to explore, understand and review the needs of the diversified industrial base, mature financial sector and the ongoing technological revolution.
The latest analysis by Frost & Sullivan of the European water and wastewater treatment equipment sectors identifies the pharmaceuticals industry as a vital industrial customer and one of its key income generators with revenues worth $186.5 million in 2000. Increasing demand for water purity assurance and more stringent regulatory forces will readily sustain growth in water and wastewater treatment equipment supply to the lucrative pharmaceuticals industry, driving projected sales to a level of $248.2 million by 2007.
Zenon Environmental Inc., of Ontario, Canada, has concluded a licensing agreement with ONDEO Degrémont. The agreement will allow ONDEO to assemble water and wastewater treatment systems using Zenon's ZeeWeed immersed membrane technology. The relationship is crucial for Zenon as it looks to penetrate the French market and take advantage of global opportunities where the capabilities of ONDEO are needed to complement Zenon's technologies.
The number of confirmed cases of Legionnaire's disease more than doubled in southeastern Spain in July, but officials said they had found the source of the outbreak in the city of Murcia, linking it to a downtown department store. Francisco Marques, the regional health minister, said there were now 178 cases of the disease out of 470 with pneumonia-like symptoms. About 80 percent of those infected were men. In the past five years, the disease has killed 26 people in Spain and infected 500, El Pais newspaper reported.
GE/Glegg, of Ontario, Canada, and a leader in the manufacturing and supplying of water treatment equipment and supplies, reached an agreement in July with The Water Group LLC, of Amesbury, Mass., to represent GE/Glegg's line of pharmaceutical water products in the New England area. The Water Group team includes industry professionals Jim Hunt, Michael Pacek and Yuriy Tatashin. The Water Group also represents DI Water Inc., also of Amesbury, a high purity water and portable deionization exchange tank vendor and R&M Manufacturing, of Lindon, Utah.
After Beijing was selected as host for the 2008 Olympic Games, the Chinese government approved a $12 billion plan to improve air and water quality by closing polluting factories or moving them to the edges of the city, where they will burn natural gas instead of coal, according to a New York Times report.
Israel's Health Ministry said in July that water in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area was safe to drink after a section contaminated by fertilizer was flushed out of the system. Nearly 2 million residents had been instructed not to drink their water. Mineral water was sold out at stores within hours when local residents rushed to stock up. Officials said it was the worst water crisis in years. Israel has been suffering from a severe drought since 1999. About 40 percent of the country's drinking water is brought across the country in an open aqueduct from the Sea of Galilee, which has reached dangerously low levels.
Millions of poor African families desperately need clean water, hiking for miles to fetch it or buying high-priced bottled water, even as wealthy Africans wash their cars and water their lawns, an expert panel of the United Nations said in June. Many slum dwellers simply steal water from pipelines. The panel said Africa needs privatized water companies that would make people pay for what they use, even if it means putting water meters in every household. Most African cities provide running water to only a portion of their residents.
American Water Works acquired Azurix North America Corp. in August, making it a premier provider of water resource management services in North America.


I've mentioned quite a few times that Steve and I had a Drobo FS network attached storage device which was really slow, so we replaced it with a Drobo 5N. The 5N is also network attached but it has an accelerator bay, which accepts an mSATA SSD. This accelerator card caches frequently accessed data and thereby speeds up the overall performance. Steve chose a Crucial M500 120GB mSATA SSD for our Drobo 5N based on the recommended list at Drobo and we've been delighted with the speed of the 5N. Once the Drobo mounts, the speeds for anything short of video editing are fabulous.
We've been humming along with that configuration since September of 2014, so about a year and a half. But this week we got a fatal error message from the Drobo Dashboard software saying that the accelerator SSD had failed.Steve went online to find a replacement card, and the newer model, the 550 from Crucial was running $128. He was ready to buy it when I stopped him. I've heard over the years that Crucial is a great company and stands by their products, so I thought it was worth a shot to see if they'd help us out.
I know I sometimes really tease out the end of a story but I'd like to take a quick moment to explain what garbage collection is. I have heard about garbage collection a lot of times, especially from Dave Hamilton on the Mac Geek Gab, but I never heard a concise enough description for it to sink into my brain. I found an article on thessdreview.com/… written by Kent Smith, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Flash Components Division, LSI Corporation. LSI MAKES flash components so this guy probably knows what he's talking about.
I put a link in the show notes to the entire article that walks you through not only Garbage Collection but also TRIM, which I also don't understand yet because I haven't read that section yet! I'm going to give you a shortened version of what Mr. Smith explains in his article but I highly recommend reading it and looking at the diagrams that really help explain it better than I will here.
There's a big difference between spinning hard disk drives and solid state, or flash, memory. With a hard disk, if you change some data, new data can be rewritten over the same location on the disk. Solid State Drives, or SSDs, cannot do that. Instead, they leave the old data in place and write to a new location. Garbage Collection is the process of cleaning up that old, invalid data. Sounds fine, you've got your garbage collector sweeping up behind at all times, right? But that's not quite as easy as it sounds.
Flash memory is divided into blocks, which is further divided into pages. Data can be written to any empty page, but only whole blocks can be erased. If you've got some invalid data and some valid data in the same block, the invalid data can't be erased from the block until that valid data gets moved to another block. Only then, can the old block be erased, allowing new data to be written to the pages in that block. This process is called Garbage Collection. You can see why if the Drobo is never giving the SSD down time to perform Garbage Collection, that the SSD would eventually become corrupt and unusable.
Ok, now back to our story. I was pretty happy that Crystal knew all about the Drobo's use of the mSATA SSD and knew what was wrong, and more importantly how to fix it. I thanked her and signed off. I went over to the Crucial knowledge base article she'd sent me to read up on how to fix the problem. Turns out the basic process to allow the SSD to perform Garbage Collection is to hook it up to a Mac or a PC and let it sit idle without the computer communicating with it. They said to boot the Mac into startup disk mode by booting up with the option key down, and then to let it sit for 6-8 hours. Luckily I've got an 8 year old MacBook lying around that I could just leave idle for that long!
That was all well and good, but I would need a way to hook it up to the Mac. I do have a Universal Drive Adapter that I thought I could use. I love this thing because it lets me hook up 2.5 or 3.5″ bare SATA or even IDE storage devices to my Mac without messing with enclosures. I also like it because it's like a puzzle and fun to try to remember how to put it together each time. There's a little black plastic piece that has all kinds of connector holes on it. It comes with a SATA cable, a power cord and transformer, and an IDE cable. It's an adventure in logic to piece it together. Unfortunately I wasn't to have that adventure because the SATA cables wouldn't connect to the mSATA connectors, they were too small.
I got back on chat and was delighted to get Crystal a second time so I didn't have to explain everything again. I told her that I didn't have an easy way to hook it up to my Mac. At first she explained that they don't support the use of their SSDs in Drobos. This was curious because, as I mentioned, Drobo recommended their SSD. The good news is that Crystal said she'd send me a replacement SSD anyway because it was under a 3 year warranty. I'm glad she did the right thing because I would have been just a tad annoyed if the warranty had not been honored.
We were going to have to wait for a few days for the replacement mSATA SSD to be sent to us. Steve and I got real curious about whether this really was a Garbage Collection problem, so Steve bought a little circuit board for under $10 that works as a carrier for the mSATA SSD, and then has a standard SATA connector on it. I did my little puzzle with the Universal Drive Adapter and I was able to plug it into the spare MacBook. I followed the instructions to boot up into startup disk mode so it got just power for 9 hours.
Unfortunately when I put it back in the Drobo, it still reported a fatal error. However, when we got the replacement SSD from Crucial, we popped it into the Accelerator bay on the 5N and it worked instantly.
I enjoyed this because a) I learned that Crucial's support is as good as everyone says, b) I finally learned what Garbage Collection means, c) I got to play with some circuit boards, and d) the whole thing only cost us $10. The only problem is that we're left with lingering doubt about what actually happened here. Did the drive fail because of a lack of Garbage Collection or not? Will our shiny new drive fail in a year or so as well?
could you erase and reformat the old mSATA SSD and reuse it somewhere?
I have a 5N but never went the SSD acceleration route. Do you recommend it? Is it worth the heartache? It sounds like this Garbage Collection is a process best avoided. I don't mind spending the bucks for the SSD, but I certainly don't want to live in the world of all you've been dealing with.
I am posting more than you may want to know about Crucial SSDs on Allison's Google Plus Community.
Barry. it just Occurred to me that reformatting probably wouldn't work, if GC really is the problem. Writing Ones and zeroes might not even do it.
Kenny, in a year and a half we had a drive failure So not a big nightmare here. Drives fail, right? If your 5h feels fast to you, and you can work on files across the network (gigabit) then I don't know if you need to. If I could think of a timing test that we both could do that would prove it it's worth it, I'd do it.
I agree, its probably not worth it. 99 percent of what I'm doing is backing up devices from around the house. No "need for speed"….other than knowing its out there and wanting it!
I know I am super late but if anyone needs this information, here it is. Garbage Collection and TRIM do not work over USB.
Wow – you just saved me a load of time. I was thinking of trying to hook up my 128GB plextor m.SATA accelerator SSD (which is giving 100% warning – according to Drobo Dashboard) to a USB controller to see if it could somehow recover its health through the garbage collection. Instead I'm just going to insert a larger capacity m.SATA (240 GB Kingston) to see if it lasts 6 years instead of 3 of the original. With SSD costs falling so fast, I think lack of GC on Drobo may become an irrelevance….Alternatively, if Drobo did their homework (if it really is a problem), why couldn't they recommend scheduled shutdowns every 3 months and have the system perform this step (GC) at boot time?


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Asia Pacific > Major Chinese forestry firm builds partnerships with Shanxi and Hunan
Major Chinese forestry firm builds partnerships with Shanxi and Hunan
Published 09:14 on January 4, 2023 / Last updated at 10:18 on January 4, 2023 / Asia Pacific, China / No Comments
State-owned China Forestry Group Corporation (CFGC) has recently formed partnerships with two regional authorities in China, the latest in a growing line of similar government-led collaborations to explore the potential of forestry projects.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Family Facilities
Le Chéile Playschool
Le Chéile Afterschool
Parent Toddler Group
Lawrencetown Playground
Lawrencetown National School
MUGA Pitch
Lets Get Active Events
Community Day Out
Local Sports Clubs/ Activities
Heritage Features, Brochure & App
The Lawrence Family: A Brief History
Griffith Valuation
Allen Pollock
The Beara O'Sullivan Walkway & the Hymany Way
O'Madden Family
Cultural Heritage & Folklore
Tidy Towns
Tidy Towns Reports
Tidy Towns Projects 2020
Annual Spring Clean
Ballinasloe Fair & Festival
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Dún na Sí Amenity & Heritage Park
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Lawrencetown Heritage Trail
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Our Lady of Clonfert
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Lawrencetown Community Development Plan
Alan Pollock
By Dr. P.K. Egan
Alan Pollock, a Scotsman with money from a shipping venture to invest, made an extensive purchase of land, up to 30,000 acres, in counties Galway and Roscommon about the Famine time. This was mainly the bankrupt estate of the Eyres of Eyrecourt which was put to auction by the Encumbered Estates Court. Pollock's first objective was to clear the tenants off and let it out in large tenures. He anticipated no difficulty in this but soon found that it would have to resort to
the courts, and that it would be less costly to offer some compensation rather than have prolonged litigation. Faced with the threat of eventual eviction in any case the tenants took the money and left, heading for the towns or the emigrant ship. But the Ballymanagh tenants remained and tradition has it that his title to this area was not clear and the alternative threat could not be made. It is also
said that evacuated cabins were demolished and ploughed over within the day. He took the plough around the property and spent much money on drainage, setting up a brick factory at Kylemore to make soil pipes. He built houses and erected gates and farm buildings. There were nine farmyards on the property.  Rows of cottages were built for his farm labourers at Newtown, Crowsnest and  elsewhere Then he divided the estate into huge farms which he leased to Protestant tenants at 21 year terms. His son-in-law, Gardner, acted as his agent  and farmed 2,000 acres. Some thousands of Catholics had been sent adrift. It  was almost a latter day plantation. Even the old tenants who were suffered to  remain were discriminated against. Many of them were forced to do seasonal work in England and Scotland to make the rent. They were made to pay the whole of the County cess. For the newcomers Pollock paid half the cess as well
as providing them with houses and every other amenity as in the English system. The old tenants received no consideration from him. He never acknowledged that they had any interest in their holdings, but paid them for their stock or crop to get rid of them. For this he was ostracised by the county landlords but lived it down. His Lismany property was divided by the Land Commission in the nineteen twenties."
An Attempt At Commercial Farming In Ireland After The Famine
By Padraig G. Lane
The Encumbered Estates Act of 1849 had as its, objectives the introduction to Ireland of proprietors who possessed the capital and who would manage estates on the positive lines of the high-farming system. This paper is a study of the manner in which one new landowner, Allan Pollock, managed the several and extensive properties purchased by him in the Encumbered Estates Court. It illustrates the Act's objectives and shows the kind of tensions that arose when the commercialisation on the agrarian structure came into conflict with customary conceptions of how that structure should be ordered.
Allan Pollock had commercial and agricultural interests in and near Glasgow. The firm of Pollock, Calmour & Co. traded in timber between Quebec, Liverpool and Glasgow. After fifty years in business Pollock and his brother John decided to retire from the firm and invest their capital in the purchase of estates in Ireland. From July 1853 to June 1858 Pollock paid £212,460 for 25,234 acres of land in Galway. The several property almost entirely situated in the East-Riding of Galway, formerly belonged to John Beatty West, Julia M. Burke, Christian St. George, William Bissett, John Eyre, Edmund Dowell, Thomas Hackett and Richard Gore Daly. These properties did not represent, however, an initial interest in agriculture for Pollock. He possessed an estate in Renfrewshire, which had been in his family for a number of generations, and he had there come under the influence of the Scottish improvers.
An analysis of Pollock's managerial policy is, best given unity by a study of its implementation on the lands of Creggs and Glinsk. These made up the property of Julia M. Burke, which had been in Chancery since 1849 and which was sold to Pollock on 24th February 1854. Analysis of his policy on this property and reaction to it are enlarged upon by reference to occurrences on the other properties purchased by him.
A Galway Estate
The village of Creggs is five miles from the town of Ballygar, Co. Galway, and just across that county's boundary line with Roscommon. Glinsk is on the Ballymoe side of Creggs. By all accounts, it was a turbulent area. Denis Kelly, the local resident magistrate, had occasion to remark that 'the two worst corners of Ireland for ribbandism [i.e. agrarian agitation] in this part of the world are near the Four Roads in the Barony of Athlone, Co. Roscommon, the mountain of Glinsk in the Barony of Ballymoe, Co Galway. Even Father Coffey, the priest of Creggs and a pastor who was to defend the tenants' interests against Pollock, had occasion to complain in 1851 that 'Creggs is the favourite battleground for all those who have got a quarrel to decide or an injury, real or imaginary, to avenge'.
Julia M. Burke's Property contained in all 7,414 acres and its total rental stood at £1,861.8s.0p. The sale particulars stated, however, that the rents had been settled when land was depressed in value during the Famine and that if new lettings were made by a purchaser the rents could justifiably be increased. It was also adduced as an advantage to a purchaser that there were no leases inexistence upon the property, a great portion of it being held by yearly tenure and the residue under terminable Court of Chancery lettings.
By his own avowal, the prospect of early possession of a property was the inducement that guided all of Allan Pollock's purchases of land in Galway. His purchases were also made on the strength of the estate's potential rental rather than on the rental then in force. Pollock though it to be in his interests to divide the properties into 'pretty extensive farms, and invest suitable farm standings to accommodate tenants with capital who might be expected to improve the property and do good to themselves and to me'. Such principles of estate management were in line with the tenets of the Scottish improvers and in accordance with Pollock's experience in Renfrewshire. When he took possession of the Burke estate at Creggs and Glinsk, however, he discovered that instead of an apparent eighty-three tenants there were nearly six hundred tenants and a population approaching to nearly three thousand, nearly all the tenants paying £5, or under, of rent'. There ere some tenuous evidence to suggest that this 'pauper Popish population', as Denis Kelly the magistrate described it, had been created by the connivance of the receiver for his own ends. At any rate, Pollock considered the tenantry to be 'neither possessed of capital nor skill to suit me as tenants'. They had, he further remarked, 'the appearance of the great poverty and want of comfort, arising, I think, from numerous families lining in comparative idleness upon a few acres of land'. Such a deployment of holdings had proved ruinous to the previous owner, he considered. 'If obliged to quit their holdings,' he observed, 'it would force them to turn to more industry and benefit both the country and themselves.' He was determined from the outset, therefore, to rationalize the deployment of the agricultural holdings. 'I never came under any promise not to evict an single man,' he stated in 1856 after a year or more in ownership and after determined resistance to his management had arisen, 'nor could I possibly do so, as it would have denied me not only all hope of an adequate return for my capital but would have interfered with a proper power of improving the property.'
Firm Beneficence
Pollock endeavoured to implement his rationalization of the property in a benevolent manner. 'He commenced buying up the interest of the small tenantry at so absurdly liberal a scale that if he had got all at the same rate it would have nearly doubled his purchase, but the population, seeing him thus liberal and being all bound up in the ribboned conspiracy, determined they would not sell and drove him to ejectments,' stated Denis Kelly in a note to the Under Secretary, Larcom. The tenants' claim was that they were led to believe that 'no solvent industrious tenant' would be disturbed and that in consequence the service of the initial notices to quit was not impeded but that when this occurred Pollock followed up this action by the service of ejectment notices. The tenants claimed that they were ready to pay rent to Pollock but that he was not interested in receiving anything but their holdings. A considerable number of the tenants were substantial, to all appearances, and possessed capital, and to this extent Pollock's description of them can be questioned. These, as Bernard Cummins, the constabulary sup-inspector in Ballygar, remarked, could not be expected to be other than reluctant to re-orientate themselves to the standing of labourers. It appears however, that Pollocks' rationalization programme was aimed as much, if not more, against these farmers or graziers as it was against the economically unviable smaller tenants. He considered that the graziers did not use their holdings in a purposeful manner and that they had exploited the small occupiers by forcing them to the marginal land on the estate and by failing to employ labour consistently and remuneratively. The grazier-farmers were thus incompatible with Pollock's determination to deploy the holdings on his property according to his own lights and his labour-orientated agricultural policy. This becomes clear from the composite picture that emerges of what occurred on the West estate.
Poor Farmer or Well-Paid Labourer?
Pollock had purchased the 10,808 acre property of Elizabeth West at Lismany near Ballinasloe in 1853 for £105,000. It had a record of turbulence. Despite evictions by the owner it had remained unsettled and poverty-stricken. The Large landholders were reputed to be behind the resistance to the Wests. Pollock, upon purchasing it, set about implementing his ideas. Conflicting versions of what occurred were given by partisans of both Pollock and the tenants. The tenants claimed that, despite their readiness to pay rent, Pollock adhered to his consolidation policy and proceeded to level as many as two-thirds of the houses and in compensation for the many evictions had erected 'nine farm steadings, twenty cottages, one corn-mill and one mansion' The Freeman's Journal, on their behalf, believed that Pollock's option of laboured status or complete removal from the property was unrealistic. 'He talks of improving – perhaps intends it – but he takes the means to ruin his tenantry. How can Mr. Pollock expect to improve what is called in Ireland a "snug farmer" by converting him into a spade labourer?' the Journal observed. 'Men who were wont to ride a good horse to market – give £3 to the priest on a marriage festival, and hand £100 bank notes to the young farmer who won the daughter's heart' could not be expected to 'slink down to day-men, called by ring of Mr. Pollock's bell'. On Pollock's behalf, it was argued that all but nine of the tenants on the West estate assented to his arrangements and that he had 'upwards of 400 persons in his employment, to whom he gives far higher wages, and wages paid in cash, than were ever before given in the country'. He was reported as paying double the rate of 6d a day hitherto paid by the farmers, and it was stated that it was these same farmers of from 25-40 acres, possessed of means but unwilling to pay rent to either the former receiver or to Pollock, who were deprived of large tracts of land, because they were 'listless and idle and running about to fairs and markets, while their lands are in a most: miserable state of' cultivation'. The removal of such men allowed Pollock to cultivate the property intensively and to employ the occupiers on his property 'in place of them going, yearly to England to the hay and corn harvest'.
That evictions did occur on a large scale on the West property cannot be gainsaid. A quarterly report on evictions in Galway East for the quarter ending on 30th September 1853 indicates that 597 persons were evicted by Pollock on the West property with. 310 of the dispossessed being re-admitted. No houses were reported. as being leveled on that occasion, a point that is consistent with. Pollock's claim on another occasion that he resorted to evictions in order to force the tenants to re-orientate themselves to labourer status. There would, indeed, appear to have been a potential labour force existent in the number of tenants who were re-admitted. The same labour-orientated management policy would appear to have been implemented on the Quansboro-Lisdaniska property of Christian St George, purchased by Pollock in 1854, at the same time as the Burke property at Creggs and Glinsk.
Police Assistance
Having failed, except in a few instances, to win the tenants on the Burke Property to an acceptance of labourer status on being compensated for disturbance, Pollock persevered in his endeavour to force them into accepting his terms by serving notices to quit. 0n 30th and 31st March 1854 a force of twenty-five of the constabulary were assembled for the protection of his bailiffs while serving notices. It was the beginning of almost three years of trouble on the estate, trouble that was simultaneously complemented by outrages on his other properties, where reaction was also setting in against his consolidation programme. By 9th June 1854, 1,400 of the tenantry on the Burke estate lay under the threat of eviction. 'The feeling of the peasantry against Pollock is very bitter and some of the worst disposed ruffians in the country are in the district,' Denis Kelly, the magistrate, wrote anxiously to Colonel Larcom on that day, seeking a re-appraisal of the arrangements for preserving order in the district. 0n June 28th, after the burning of Mr. Pollock's mansion at Sycamore Hill near Eyrecourt and of two unoccupied houses at Lisanacody on Pollock's other properties, Kelly was still more concerned. The houses and mansion had been bought in from tenants with compensation. Already in May, Pollock and his agents were given occasional constabulary protection. After further incidents in August and October, when tenants in Creggs were warned against handing over their crop's to Pollock, when Mr. Snodgrass, his local agent there, was threatened and when a dwelling-house and barn at Annaghcorrib, near Eyrecourt, were burned to the ground, after the occupying tenants had accepted Pollock's settlement terms, a permanent protection party was settled on Pollock's property at Creggs and Glinsk at the request of Pollock. In September, in fact, on Pollock's bog a Dr Bayley of Rookwood was approached threateningly, while hunting, by two men who had mistaken him for Pollock. 0n 10th January 1855 and on 28th March following other unoccupied houses were burned on Pollock's property. Denis Kelly was concerned. 'Our Creggs district, Pollock's territory, is still very uneasy and "combination" so fast gaining ground that I am very apprehensive of bad work and it is a scene of awful mismanagement and loss of money,' he wrote in a letter to Larcom in April.
Kelly's concern is understandable in the context of the determined and violent resistance made to several efforts by Pollock's bailiffs to serve ejectment notices from January to March. All initial effort at the end of January was abandoned when, despite a constabulary protection party of fifty-three men, Pollock's' agent could not find anyone to point out the houses to be served to the process server from Dublin. A second effort on February 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th  was only effected after the protection force had been increased from fifty-three to eighty-three men. So determined was the resistance to the service that Bernard Cummins warned the authorities that, if Pollock persisted in his determination to clear three thousand persons, a force of three hundred men would be needed. The people, stated Cummins, thought it better to die once in defense of their holdings 'than become inmates of a poor-house'. Forewarned of this frame of mind, Cummins accordingly headed of an independent effort by Pollock's agent to post ejectment notices on public buildings in Creggs on February 28th in view of the prospective inability of the small force of constabulary to save the Dublin process server from a market-day crowd of four hundred tenants. Further efforts on March 10th and 12th were also violently resisted.
Failure In Court
The event which really buoyed up the determination of the tenantry, however, was the failure of Pollock to obtain a favourable verdict in an eviction test case at Galway Assizes. The tenants in the suit were jubilant when Burke, the process server who had served the initial notices to quit, failed to appear in court to prove the services. Burke, despite a search for him from February 27th to March 7th, was not available for possibly two reasons. It was alleged that he was annoyed that Pollock would not allow him £200 for a house that he owned on the property. It was also alleged that he had been intimidated by the ribbon conspiracy in the district.
For the moment the verdict caused a pause in the carrying out of Pollock's programme. A number of tenants had accepted his terms of compensation, namely, the foregoing of all rents owed and payments for crops. He had a modicum of success also in the eviction of four families consisting of twenty-seven persons who were, however, allowed to re-enter as caretakers and who presumably assented to become labourers. Two further families were evicted in June 1855 and were then re-settled on another part of the property and several other tenants accepted compensation for their holdings during the summer. Temporarily resigned to a postponement of the major programme of consolidation, Pollock's agent, satisfied that the tenants would also for the moment be peaceable, dispensed with the permanent protection that had been afforded by the constabulary on the property. It was but a lull in the storm, however, and Denis Kelly, the magistrate, was on hand to record the renewal of turmoil.
Pollock obtained the services of James B. Concannon of Glantane, a local solicitor. On behalf of Pollock he again proffered terms to the tenants. He offered them two years' rent if they would give up possession. Failing in this, he proceeded to obtain a protection party of constabulary for the further service of notices to quit on the tenants of Creggs and Glinsk before September 29th. Concannon had secured Burke, who, having already served most of the estate, would enable a large number of the tenants to be evicted at the next sessions or assizes and who, knowing as he did everyone on the property personally, would place the entire tenantry of the estate at his mercy. Concannon sent Burke over to Scotland until the time was ready to prove his former services or serve new notices. Kelly became apprehensive. With the prospects of the tenants selling their crops to Pollock in the knowledge of Burke's power over them, Kelly feared that a large haggard at Fairfield on the Creggs section of the estate, built to receive such crops, would be burned and that the labourers bringing in those crops would be attacked. The long winter nights that were imminent also troubled him in the light of his considered opinion that the Catholic clergy of the district were urging the tenants to resist forcibly any effort to dispossess them, whether by compensation or eviction, so that their livings would not be cut off by the clearance envisaged by Pollock. He was apprehensive that the rank and file of the constabulary, being also Catholic, were untrustworthy in the circumstances. He was urging Colonel Larcom therefore, to see to the augmentation of the constabulary in the district and to the re-establishment of a protection force on the property itself, so that the local agent, Snodgrass, might not be shot and so that prospective service of ejectments would be effected without bloodshed.
Clergy Involvement
There was, in fact, truth in Kelly's allegation that the Parish Priest, Father Mulrennan, and the curate, Father Gillion, of Creggs were supporting the tenants in their stand against Pollock. The Parish Priest of Glinsk, according to Kelly, had died of apoplexy on the altar, while denouncing Pollock. Concannon claimed that, as a result of denunciatory sermons in Creggs on September 23rd, he could not get anyone to serve the papers, just when he had obtained a protection party of a hundred of the constabulary for their service. He also claimed that as a result of the sermons an agreement on the part of the tenants, to hand over their crops on September 27th in return for their full value, compensation for disturbance from their holdings and a receipt for two and a half years' rent, did not materialize. We have already referred to the support given to the tenants on the West property by the Catholic clergy. Their stand and that taken by the Creggs and Glinsk clergy was to be followed in 1856 by Father Colley, a former Parish Priest of Creggs, and by Father Barry, the Parish Priest of Clonfert. It was in a pattern also with the stand taken by the clergy on other properties in Galway and Mayo at this time. The failure of Concannon to obtain bailiffs as a result of the denunciatory sermons provoked Thomas Miller, Pollock's Dublin-based agent, to write to the authorities, reiterating Concannon's complaint against the Catholic clergy of Creggs. 'I have no doubt that but for the interference of the Roman Catholic clergy, the people would have been all quiet, as they were well disposed to agree to Mr. Pollock's most liberal propositions and I feel ashamed of the conduct of the Roman Catholic gentry of the country, who disapproving of the conduct of the priests, as they do, yet have not the manliness or courage to openly say so.' Since he feared that 'with all the seeming quietness of the country, it is more like a smouldering volcano ready to burst out when the opportunity offers', he requested a renewal of the protection party afforded to the property in the previous winter.
Miller's, and indeed Denis Kelly's, analysis of the agrarian feeling of the countryside is interesting in the context of a countryside survey made at the same time by the authorities on the incidence of ribbandism and the advisability of continuing in force the Peace Preservation Act. While the consensus of constabulary opinion was that the countryside was quiet and that ribbandism was relatively confined in a dormant state to a thin wedge of the country which rail from East Clare and East Galway through Westmeath and Meath to Monaghan and Armagh, there was an admission that, while increasing agricultural prices, increased rates of agricultural wages and better landlord-tenant relations had caused the system to decline, it needed 'but an exciting cause to bring it at once into operation'. The raising of rents, evictions or the taking of farms after evictions were considered to be the primary sparks which set off new conflagrations.
Agrarian Militancy
Miller's and Kelly's prognostications are also interesting in the context of immediate occurrences on the Pollock properties. On the property of Edmund Dowell, for instance, conveyed to Pollock on December 15th, the receiver was forced to seek constabulary protection when a distraint he was making for arrears of rent was resisted by a stone-carrying mob and the stock re-taken, when cattle on other holdings were removed at his approach and when he failed to obtain reapers to cut the standing corn. He obtained a protection party of a hundred men for a distraint on December 3rd, but due to 'the desperate and lawless disposition of the people in this locality' the force did not prove sufficient to prevent the crowd from taking away the distraint again. The occurrences were a barometer of agrarian feeling as a whole on Pollock's properties in the Creggs and other districts. On December 17th 18th and 19th a constabulary force of one hundred and seventy-five men from Roscommon and Galway were needed to effect the service of those ejectment notices at Creggs and Glinsk which Concannon had been unable to effect on October 2nd. Kelly, in fact, had been fearful of a coordinated attack by the disaffected tenantry on both the Dowell and Burke properties and it does appear that the tenantry were determined to resist the police. Even a force of twenty dragoons from Roscommon was requested to be ready for a possible clash. The protection party assembled was sufficient to overawe the tenants and, with the exception of some boiling water thrown at the bailiffs, the ejectment notices were successfully and peacefully served on the tenantry of two parishes on the property, Kilbegnet and Balinakill. While all open engagement with the constabulary and dragoons was dodged by the tenantry, there was evidence to suggest that three mendicants strolling the district were men from Limerick and Tipperary engaged to organize the shooting of Pollock at his home in Glasgow; Pollock's local steward, Algeo, was also reputed to have been in danger. The conspiracy and the militancy of the tenants was attributed firmly by Pollock to the success with which the tenantry had been able to forestall their eviction. 'It appears to we very unfortunate for Ireland that such a feeling should exist with the tenantry that they have a right to remain in possession of their holdings after the expiring of their agreements,' he stated in a letter to Sir George Grey, the Horne Secretary, seeking the service of ejectments through the post, a proposition which was turned down by the Government. The Government, while conscious of the potential beneficent effects of Pollock's consolidation programme, considered that 'a more prudent regard to the habits and feelings of the population would have been desirable'. The Government was also conscious of the attention Pollock's policy was arousing in Parliament and did not wish to exacerbate the situation by sanctioning a change in the practice of serving ejectments. It considered that he could effect the services in the normal manner by getting fearless bailiffs.
Pollock was again defeated, however, in a test case at Galway Assizes in March 1856. This time his defeat occurred by reason of the fact that his lawyer's clerk could not identify the defendants or swear that the names of the defendants were in the notices he had served. He had apparently filled in blank notices, sent from Dublin from the maps and rentals, without personal knowledge of the terrain or the tenantry. A further objection raised against Pollock's suit on this occasion was that since Pollock's wife held joint ownership of the property she could not legally confer a delegated authority to turn out a tenant.
This second defeat, coupled with a full-scale debate in Parliament in the following months on the subject of his policy, resulting from a petition to Parliament on behalf of the tenants of Klibegnet and Ballinakill on the Burke property, forced Pollock on the defensive and provoked a certain amount of interesting analytical comment on the merits of his policy among public partisans of both Pollock and the tenants.
Parliament And Press
At the initial debate on the petition on April 29th it was suggested, even by Disraeli and Palmerston that Pollock's evictions and the constabulary support he needed for the evictions and for the protection of his property were a provocation to disorder in rural Ireland and tended to destroy the overall good effect produced by the Encumbered Estates Court. Upon the resumption of the debate on May 27th, by which time the Government had been documented on the subject, support for Pollock and the tenants tended. to polarize in conflicting reports as to the occurrences and their good or bad effects, a summary of which has already been given. A measure of qualified approval by George Henry Moore, the tenant-right supporter, for the employment given by Pollock, drew fire on him by Father Colley of Lecarrow, Co. Roscommon, the former Parish Priest of Kilbegnet. The argument for tenants on the occasion of the debate in Parliament was based on material supplied by another tenant-pastor, Father Derry, the Parish Priest of Clonfert.
Moore, it would appear, had taken a letter written by Pollock to the Dally Express to mean that Pollock was imbued with a genuine wish to improve the tenantry and was amenable to taking an amicable settlement with the tenants, which would not entail dispossession of their properties or their reduction to the status of labourers, and on the basis of this Moore had attributed a proper sense of a landlord's duty to Pollock. He denied in correspondence with Father Coffey that he had taken a stand against the tenants' interests, and the genuineness of Moore's apologia is ascertainable from a letter he wrote to Pollock at this time, although it should be noted that Moore, while suggesting continuance of the tenants of a yearly tenure, was careful to observe that such did not imply tenure in perpetuity and that good conduct determined even this yearly tenure. Pollock's own letter, upon which Moore based his judgment of him, was in the Daily Express of May 28th. In this letter Pollock adopted the tone of all injured, misunderstood and benevolent tycoon, who had spent capital in an effort to contribute to the 'material prosperity and happiness of the people in my employment'. He spelled out the principles on which he acted, principles which we have already alluded to, and recorded the circumstances in which he obtained the property. He grieved that although he had got neither rent nor possession from the tenants of Creggs and Glinsk he had to pay poor-rates for them and he succinctly recounted the high labour content of his agriculture on the other properties he had bought.
The expected publicity in Parliament and his defeat at the March Assizes did not deter Pollock from fighting still further for his principles, although it did prompt him to make a renewed attempt at a friendly settlement, despite the continued refusal by the tenants to pay rents or settle amicably. On June 2nd Pollock's counsel was granted a new trial of the ejectment suits at Galway Assizes on July 19th. On this occasion Pollock got a verdict but undertook to give the tenants concerned their crops and to permit them to stay until. November. It was a test case again and its success would appear to have settled the problem on the Creggs-Glinsk property. On August 20th the remainder of the tenants were given notice to attend at Fairfield, the estate mansion, where they had the option of agreeing to go in November on the compensatory terms arranged or to pay their rents and be allowed a further year's tenure. On November 22nd the Western Star was able to report that there was a spirit of good feeling again on the estate, that those who had left their holdings were satisfied with the remunerative wages being paid to them as labourers and that those who had paid their rent were content with advantageous leases.
Pollock's Agricultural Policy
It remains to survey the nature of Pollock's agriculture and the labour relations that existed on the properties he bought. Pollock's consolidation policy was co-existent in his own mind with a re-orientation of the dispossessed tenantry to the standing of labourers. 'So far from de-populating the district,' he stated of Creggs and Glinsk in his apologia to the Daily Express 'I Feel that the population is increased and will require to be still more increased to enable me to cultivate the land as I desire it.' he stated that since 1853, when he had first bought property, he had spent £130,000 upon budding, labour and other improvements and adduced as a proof 'that employment is very largely afforded to agricultural labourers', and that 'last year there were 700 acres of turnips grown and this year there are 1,400 acres of ground prepared for turnips, while before my purchase there were not 20 acres of turnips grown in any one year'. He added that: 'We have, besides, this year 400 acres of potatoes planted and other crops in proportion with a view to giving regular employment to the people, as well as to improve the soil.' The statement is informative in its own right and in the context of his concern, mentioned earlier in this paper, with the manner in which the farmers had allowed the land to deteriorate and had neglected to employ labour.
In August 1857 Pollock was reported as having twenty thousand acres in tillage for the stall-feeding of cattle and for workhorses on the West estate at Lismany, Ballinasloe. This would appear to have been the primary nature of Pollock's agriculture and to all appearances it did employ an extraordinary number of labourers. Henry Coulter, when traveling near Pollock's property at Ballinasloe at the end of the decade, reported that 'at least four hundred people are kept constantly at work'. A local journal, reporting in 1857 on a harvest festival on this properly at Ballinasloe, quoted an even higher figure Of 1,500 workers as obtaining 'daily employment, on the property. In April 1858 Pollock was reported as having 'ordered considerably more works to be commenced for the purpose of giving constant employment to the thousands of men, women and children whom he had raised from abject beggars to comparative independence'. It is interesting to note also that Coulter observed that 'Two of Mr. Pollock's large farms have been let to farmers, who possess sufficient capital to work them properly and for which purpose they also require a large number of men.' This, besides illustrating the carrying out of another facet of Pollock's managerial policy, was an example of the implementation of the capitalistic farming initially envisaged during discussion on the Encumbered Estates Bills. This considerable employment on the Pollock properties was a reproof to those who had questioned the advisability of tenants re-orientating themselves to the standing of labourers, a standing that might prove of only a temporary nature. Pollock's principal advocate at the debate on 27th May 1856, Sir Malcolm Shaw-Steward had pointed out the logicality of Pollock's considerable expenditure on farm buildings if purely pastoral farming was envisaged at any date.
Pollock did suspend employment on one occasion. This was after the burning of his mansion at Sycamore Hill in 1854, and the suspension apparently caused hardship among the labourers. This was an exceptional occasion. In 1857, when it appears that there was anxiety about the introduction of farm machinery on a large scale and the threat it posed to manual labourers, the Western Star wrote assuringly that it had not lessened the demand for such labour and that there was still plenty of work and wages.
The wages paid by Pollock were also considerable. In 1854, as we have seen, he was reported as doubling the daily rate of 6d and Pollock himself claimed it to be so. Bernard Cummins, the constabulary sub-inspector in Ballygar, reported however that the rate had increased from 8d or 10d to 1s but that this included meals. He attributed the rise in wages more to the scarcity of labour that resulted from emigration than to Pollock's beneficence. The argument by the Freeman's Journal in 1856 that the unremunerative nature of the labour market in the West at that time did not warrant handing over a rented dozen acres of poor land does not appear valid in the light of the scarcity of labour prevailing and the improved rate of wages actually available in the West. Where Coulter asserted a monthly payment of wages in excess of £700 on the Lismany estate at Ballinasloe, the Roscommon Journal claimed a wage bill of £4,000. In 1863 George Lowe, Pollock's agent at Creggs, reported a wage bill of £81,963 during the previous six and a half years, £19,456 being paid out alone in the previous year and a half. One tenant, Larry Tierney, was reported as being considerably satisfied with his new status of labourer after being dispossessed in 1856. He was now able to take a bread and tea breakfast, which be could seldom or ever do when be had the land.'
Eventual Success?
Labour relations on the property appear to have been generally good. David McColl, one of Pollock's; stewards, was shot at near Eyrecourt, through a bedroom window on 24th May 1857 and on June 9th one of his blacksmiths was similarly shot at, but these incidents do not seem to have been the result of any popular dissatisfaction with Pollock's system. The only real evidence of labour trouble occurred in 1863 when an effort was made to force workmen to abandon work on a Church holiday. It was alleged that the workmen were given the option of working or been, thrown off the property. It was also alleged on this occasion that Pollock, had beguiled the priests of the parishes on the estate into believing that he would honour Church holidays in this matter of work and had then gone back on his word after he had successfully got the tenantry to accept the status of labourers.
Father Lavelle, in his book The Irish Landlord grouped Pollock with Lord Lucan and the Reverend William Palmer in a denunciation of sweeping clearances made in the interests of sheep and cattle. It is fair to balance Father Lavelle's judgment of Pollock, and to conclude this study of Pollock's management of his properties, by reference to a pleasant social occasion on Pollock's property in 1873 when Pollock was presented with a painting of his son by the tenantry. Allowing that it was probably not done together on their own initiative, their expression of gratitude for the employment he had given them must be given a certain degree of credence. Pollock himself observed in reply to their address that he was glad that he had lived 'to show that my plans, so misunderstood at one time, were not dictated by the selfish desire for mere wealth or aggrandizement, but by an honest purpose to improve the country, to develop the capacities of the soil and to benefit my fellowman by showing what well-directed skill and labour can accomplish.'
'This paper is based on an M.A. thesis prepared by the author for University College, Dublin, in which full references for all details and quotations are given.
Mr. Pollock's Farm Steadings, Residence and Other Works, Co. Galway
Extract from The Dublin Builder Nov. 1st 1859
The monster steadings erected by Mr. Pollock on his estates in the County Galway, have acquired a world-famed celebrity for that gentleman, and the following is a general description of on of the Fourteen completely finished since July 1856, when the first stone was laid. The main building covers an area of 3320 square yards roofed in: the barn, straw house, and steaming house are at end, measuring 176 feet by 24 feet in the clear, with two ranges of granaries, sheaf barn, and straw houses above. The sheaf barn is 64 feet by 24 feet, and is supplied with a threshing machine, driven by a water wheel, which also works a bone mill. In another part of the building, a pair of millstones, a straw cutter, oil cake bruiser, a pair of fanners in each granary and a force pump, supplying a cistern 38 feet above ground level, and containing 2,400 gallons.
At right angles to barn, and nearly in its centre, it is bisected by a transept 199 feet long by 24 feet wide and 22 feet high. The roof and sidewalls of second floor of transept are supported by metal pillars and trussed girders. The ground floor of the transept is a through passage, and turnip and root store for feeding purposes. Twelve feet high above the passage is a loft the whole length of transept, and 24 feet wide, part being a hayloft, and the remainder stores for cut hay, bran, oats, oilcake, grass seeds etc.
The four angles included in barn and transept are each enclosed and roofed and subdivided for cattle etc. The respective size of each angle are as follows: – 95 feet by 72 feet and 64 feet by 58 feet on one side of barn and 64 feet by 72 feet and 64 feet by 58 feet on the other, each 12 feet high from door to under side of the barn. Two adjacent angles on right and left of barn and each side of transept – viz. 95 by 72 feet – are each arranged for 232 tied-up feeding cattle and have stalls feeding passages and fire clay feeding troughs. The other two angles right and left of barn and on the west side of transept – viz. 95 by 58 feet on the one side and 64 by 58 feet on the other – are subdivided as follows:- in the large angle is the stable, for 19 horses in stalls, and 16 in loose boxes, also 6 loose boxes for bullocks, each box to hold two. In one of the angles of this square is the steward's or caretaker's lodge, containing kitchen, parlour and closet on ground floor, and two bedrooms above and which, though contained within the square, is completely disconnected from the interior by a high wall with a small window for surveillance.
The other side of square – viz. 64 by 58 feet – is subdivided into 8 loose boxes, for two cattle each, a large bone store with bone mill, blacksmith's forge and carpenter's workshop. The whole is principally lighted from the roof, although sidelights are used where they could be put in with propriety. On the roofs and sides of transepts are 52 louvre board ventilators, ensuring free current of fresh air through the whole establishment. Owing to the extra height of the walls (12 feet) and roof and space above the cattle there is no extra current of cold air in any particular part of the whole house when fully filled with cattle and horses (which it has been during the last two seasons and is now filled the third time) there is always a uniformity of temperature through the whole.
There are 1,740 superficial square yards of timber flooring and 4,200 yards of slating. The roofs on this and all the other buildings on Mr. Pollock's estate are all sheeted with sheeting nailed on to horizontal purline which gives the inside a neat clean and comfortable appearance and also keeps the houses cooler and a uniform ventilation – every joint of the sheeting and every joint of the slating being a ventilator on a small scale. The whole roofing is supported with 36 metal pillars, 12 feet high, each pillar answering the double purpose of pillar and down pipe for roof water. Connected with said pillars are 390 feet of cast iron gutters, which answer both for gutters and roof girders: also 920 feet of eave gutters, 850 feet of lead valley and 240 feet of down pipe, 65 roof lights, 55 side lights and 20 outside doors. The steading is lighted up with Messer Edmunds and Co.'s (Capel Street) hydro – carbon gas in upwards of 60 bat wing jets, in glass lanterns all in suitable places through the whole building, presenting an imposing scene when all is lighted up and upwards of 300 cattle contentedly but busily eating-up their last meal for the night, with all the light and shade of roof and pillars and the various colours of the cattle.
The main building is walled all round and enclosed by and open shed inside, 1,100 feet long by 14 feet wide and between main building and surrounding shed three is an area of 24 feet wide on three sides and 70 feet wide on the fourth dies, in which there are two large dung-pits and liquid-tank. There is only one main entrance onto yard and main building and one from stack-yard into second story of barn, which is on a level with the stack-yard. All the large stack-yard is fitted up with iron stack-stands, arranged for iron tramways from stacks into barn. One half of the surrounding sheds are divided into 10 loose boxes for 2 bullocks each box, and 3 loose boxes for bulls, and pens for 140 store cattle; one half of the remaining half are cart-sheds, harness and tool room, pay-office and weighing-office and the remaining half of this subdivision consists of grain-store, poultry-house, implement-store, water-closet, and glass retort-house. The whole extent of ground floorage of surrounding shed is 1,711 superficial square yards. The total ground taken up with buildings is 8,450 superficial square yards, the total of all the roofs is 7,555 superficial square yards, total of al ground floors 5,050 superficial square yards and 1,750 square yards of timber floors. The total cubical contents of all buildings are 56,224 cubic feet- the actual cost of the whole being under 2d per cubic foot. Five fire plugs are placed throughout and two hoses are provided in the event of accident.
In addition to the above works a large dwelling house, in the Elizabethan style, has been erected for the proprietor; also 8 farmhouses, a large flour and oatmeal mill, with store and house for miller, 2 carpenter's shops and blacksmiths' forger, 2 saw-mills, 7 steam thrashing-mills, 4 limekilns, 40 stewards', tradesmen's and labourers' cottages – comprising upwards of 40 miles of stone walls. The plans and specification were made and the work superintended by Mr. William Maxelll, of Ballinasloe, by whom the above particulars have been communicated.
Mr. Allan Pollock As A Farm and An Engineer
Some of the gigantic steadings erected by this enterprising Scotch agriculturalist on his vast territory in the west of Ireland, have been fully described in previous numbers of this journal, but as our cotemporary, the Agricultural Review in a comprehensive sketch brings to light much additional interesting matter respecting the general farming and engineering operations carried on under same auspices, we give the following therefore: –
"We take Mr. Pollok's farming then his engineering," and his doings as landlord, just as we find them – the same as we might do with any other unfinished operations. No one of any powers of observation can survey Me. Pollok's works without being interested, amazed, and interested, Difficulties which would have paralysed the energies of almost any other man have been smoothed down obstacles which would have appalled most men he has walked over with easy step, and now harmony reign where confusion seemed but lately to be safe in perpetual dominions.
We can conceive of no better example of this kind of overpowering confusion than that presented by a large estate just vacated by the numerous tenantry. Hundreds of houses in all stages of ruin; garden walls, field fences, marsh and dykes, stock yards choked with docks and nettles, swamps un-drained, or worse, badly drained, skills of land exhausted of whatever fertility they ever possessed in the hands of hopeless tenants-at-will, roads, worse to be dealt with than no roads all; cairns of stones, and gravel pits; bogs unevenly cut and fields laid out in defiance of rule and measure. Farms – ay, townlands and even parishes, in this state presented no very inviting job for the engineer who was to lay all out in a few symmetrical fields, every inch yielding the highest rate of produce. The engineering has been done and now the plough in turning over one furrow may traverse several townlands in which no mark of home or hearth of man is to be seen any more than if the furrow were that of a ship on its way on the ocean. Preparatory to the laying out of the land for such an exhibition, much had to be done besides squaring fields and consolidating farms. The land had to be drained and this on so large a scale that it became a matter of expedition and economy to set up large tile factories on the estate. Thousands of acres have been thus drained and the climate itself improved by the superabundant moisture of the soil being allowed to escape by underground channels to the sea, instead of rising in vapour from the surface.
The eye that saw the necessity for tile-factories and brick- yards saw also that other extensive manufactories must be established and thus some of the more immediate relations of agriculture to commerce and manufacturing industry are exemplified, without leaving the one estate in the westmost county in Connaught; extensive forges, carpenters, stone walls, gas works, and a number of other and kindred establishments which were usually to be found only in considerable towns; soon sprang into being there, and, at an early period in the progress of remodelling the estate, the monthly wages bill amounted to £1,000. Thus the carts, ploughs, harrows gates, and all other implements and machines required in carrying out the most advanced system of farming are made and kept in repair on the estate, Twelve farms have now been provided with building, some of these farms being on a scale requiring byre accommodation for 700 head of cattle, besides stabling for the complement of horses. These buildings, as might be expected from the manner in which everything in gone about, are finished in the most commodious and convenient manner, not only supplied in every part by pipes with water from cisterns, but lit with gas.
The farm of Ganaveen is 4,000 acres in extent and the steading thereon is unequalled by anything in the country. The inside of the cowshed measures 310 by 168 feet and is set off in parallel sections with the animals facing each other in the opposite rows. The feeding is supplied from the alleys in front and the manure removed, and bedding supplied by means of a passage three feet wide, behind the stands. The cows are chained to upright posts, and the food placed in vitrified fireclay troughs. The polled cattle and plough bullocks are fed in loose boxes, and the younger description of stock kept in an open shed, the roof of which is supported by upright metal pillars against the inside of the court-yard wall. The stables occupy a separate department of the covered structure, and stalls, loose boxes, harness-rooms for thirty six horses are provided. This is furnished with a registered corn feeding meter, from which a definite quantity of grain can be taken for each, and the daily consumption is easily ascertained by means of hand or indicator easily checked. The barn is situated in the centre of the building, with the machinery on the left. The straw and chaff rooms are on the ground floor from which straw for bedding, and chaff for mixing with other feeding materials, can be readily removed as required. The mill wheel, turned by water, not only threshes the grain, shakes the straw, lifts the corn by means of elevator to the granary overhead, where proper machinery is at work for winnowing, packing and weighing it, till ready for delivery to the mill, but, the power is also made available for crushing bones, beans, and oilcake, cutting hay, straw, and chaff, slicing mangels, turnips, and potatoes, cleaning grass and other agricultural seeds, and many other uses which largely economises manual labour.
A shed, 14 feet in width, along the outer-wall is apportioned for implements, cart-shed, tool-house, artificial manure depot, etc. and between this and the main building is a vacant space of 27 feet in breadth for the ordinary purposes of traffic, The manure pit is situated in the centre of an open yard, to the rear of the cow-shed, and a large tank, lined with cement, is attached for the reception of the urine, the contents of which are incorporated with the dung, previous to application or pumped upon a huge heap of bog mould intended for top dressing, or more frequently as manure for cabbages, The haggard is situated on a raised surface, on a level with the threshing department of the barn, and contains the produce of 250 acres of corn, in addition to several hundred tons of hay. Both these are made up in ricks 70 yards in length by 4 in breadth, and supported by means of metal stands, connected by means of malleable iron bars. The wheat, oats, and barley are built in consecutive links, suited to the dimensions of the barn.
If there be among our readers any having the capital, the enterprise, and the skill requisite to meet the landlord's views, they may be looking forward to a location on the Lismany estates.
Our contemporary omits – we are sure through inadvertence – that in the engineering operations, Mr. Pollok was ably assisted by Mr. William Maxwell, Agricultural Engineer, Ballinasloe.
© 2021 Lawrencetown Community Development CLG .


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Speedway League
It's a longtime dream come true for a majority of speedway fans - the game based on the best speedway leagues around the globe! The game offers three leagues with all their teams. The fans of FIM Speedway Grand Prix 3 will be surprised to see the adjustments made to the racing mechanics that is even more realistic owing to the brand new 'simulation' mode. This is a title that cannot go unnoticed by any speedway fan!
All the teams in three different leagues - join the competition over several consecutive seasons.
Career Mode - start in any of the leagues and compete to advance to the top and ultimately win the championship!
Brand new 'simulation' mode - even more realistic and polished game mechanics requiring skillful body balancing, operating the clutch and throttle and overall precision in every section of the race - from the starting gate through corners to the finish line.
Advanced 3D garage - large numbers of motorcycle technical modifications and tuning, new part types on offer as well as access to all the league-related information.
Enhanced graphics - excellent lighting effects, refined track surface and the number of animations extended tenfold since FIM Speedway Grand Prix 3
22 tracks - race in full daylight or at the sun down just as in real-life league competition.
Multiplayer online - for up to four players.
External editor - provides the tools to create your own team.
Windows XP/Vista CPU: Pentium IV 2 GHz Ram: 1 GB (2 GB) Graphics card: GeForce 7600 or better Sound card: DirectX 9c compatible HDD: 2 GB of free space
Publisher: Techland


From Gothic architecture to Frankenstein and the Illuminati, I spent a warm summer's day in this picturesque Bavarian city on the banks of the Danube.
Last summer I travelled by train from Salzburg in Austria through Germany back home to Wales, hoping to practise my German whilst soaking in some German culture, sun and food. Keen to squeeze in a slightly smaller city, I arrived in Ingolstadt - an hour ride from Munich - on a hot summer's day with my huge backpack weighing me down.
I jumped on the bus from the train station into the city centre and sat down at the first cafe I found. I was already struck by the beautiful Bavarian town surrounding me. Long gone was the hustle and bustle of the city and instead historic buildings dotted quaint, cobbled streets.
Ingolstadt had made it onto the itinerary for my trip mainly because of my love for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; about a third of the novel takes place in the city. The story's tale of transgression, science and humanity had captured my imagination and I felt like I was stepping into the darkness of the novel as I took in the gothic architecture of the Liebfrauenmünster (Ingolstadt's largest church) in the centre of the old town.
Near the church I found the Kreuztor, a gothic red brick city gate dating back to 1385. But as I continued to wander around the Altstadt it didn't strike me as the perfect setting for Shelley's tale; the colourful baroque houses seemed more suited to a fairytale than to the well known gothic novel, where a young scientist animates human remains to create a creature set on destroying its maker.
I recognised the tall tower of the Moritzkirche as the 'high white steeple' which Victor Frankenstein remarks on when he arrives in the city for the first time and saw the Alte Anatomie of Ingolstadt University. Here, students like Victor Frankenstein carried out their medical experiments (they used dead pigs rather than the human corpses which Frankenstein prefers in the novel).
The building is now the German Medical History museum and there is no lack of gory exhibits and intimidating medical instruments.
I wandered along the banks of the Danube, crossing over the river to see the city's two fortresses. One, the Turm Triva, hosts the Bavarian Police Museum and the other, the Reduit Tilly, part of the Bavarian Army Museum focusing on the history of World War One and post-World War One Germany; both were built for King Ludwig I of Bavaria in the mid 17th Century.
It was however the Neues Schloss back on the Altstadt side of the river which particularly struck me. The white 15th Century castle was built for Duke Ludwig the Bearded in 1418 with three metre thick walls, Gothic net vaulting and individually carved doorways. Interestingly, the future French President Charles de Gaulle was held in the castle as a prisoner of war during the First World War.
Of course, Frankenstein never actually existed. but he and his creature were ever-present in my mind during my visit to the city. In fact, my preoccupation almost barred me from learning about the intrigue of the true history of Ingolstadt. Shelley's choice of Ingolstadt as a setting was perhaps more to do with its association with the Illuminati than with a good university medical school.
Yes, it sounds far fetched, but Ingolstadt is in fact the birthplace of the Illuminati. In 1776 Adam Weishaupt, a professor of law at the University of Ingolstadt, founded the Order of the Illuminati in the city. It was a secret organisation formed to oppose religious influence on society and the abuse of power by the state.
The Bavarian Illuminati was officially disbanded just 10 years after it had been set up, but it is still considered to have been an important Enlightenment force and many believe not only that they continued to exist, but that they were the intellectual fathers of the French Revolution. Scholars have seen the connection between Ingolstadt and the Illuminati as what which led Mary Shelley to set her novel about the limits of humanity in the city.
After learning this, I walked around the streets of Ingolstadt with even more intrigue. I stood looking at the pale blue building on Theresienstrasse, Weishaupt's former home, wondering if the plaque marking it as a late 18th Century Illuminati meeting place was actually signalling that Ingolstadt's picture-postcard Bavarian streets were hiding bigger secrets than the tale of Victor Frankenstein. Maybe if you visit the city, you'll find out.


Blood sugar or blood glucose is sugar that the bloodstream carries to all the cells in the body to supply energy. Blood glucose regulation is the result of teamwork between the fat tissues and muscles in the body, along with the brain, liver, pancreas and the small intestine, as well as a host of hormones, including insulin. Diabetes develops when the efficiency of one or more members of the regulating team is compromised, leading to elevated blood glucose. If it's too high over time, it can damage the eyes, kidneys, nerves and blood vessels; and if it's too low, it can cause extreme fatigue.
Blood glucose temporarily rises after a meal, as food is broken down for use by the body. This surge triggers the production of insulin, which signals the cells in the body—particularly those in fat, muscles, and the liver—to absorb any extra blood glucose, either burning it as energy or storing it for later use. As cells absorb glucose, its concentration in the bloodstream stops increasing and starts to move towards the target range, explaining why blood sugar tests are taken before and after fasting.
"Keeping blood sugar level is of utmost importance," states nutritionist Dr Siddhant Bhargava. "The normal values range between 70-100 mg/dl. Higher levels of glucose require more insulin to break it down, putting additional pressure on the pancreas to generate more of the hormone. The only way to keep insulin secretion moderated is to not keep spiking your blood glucose levels and maintaining a balance," he adds. This increase can result in type 2 diabetes and PCOS (in women). Elevated blood sugar levels can also cause increased triglycerides, which are not great for cardiac health. Talking about the complications that crop up when blood sugar is not maintained, Gita Ramesh, joint managing director, Kairali Ayurvedic Group, says, "Besides the most obvious diabetes, you may suffer from heart ailments, kidney failure, eye problems, obesity, neurological disorders and various gastrointestinal diseases." On the other side, falling blood sugar levels mean your body will not have enough energy to perform daily tasks. Blood sugar determines how you age and which diseases you can prevent.
Increased thirst, frequent headaches, blurred vision, weak bladder and fatigue are the early signs of imbalance in blood sugar levels. The liver controls blood sugar when you are not eating, and the pancreas controls blood sugar when you are. When glucose and insulin levels are high, the liver responds by absorbing glucose. If there is excess sugar already stored, then the liver doesn't even get to burning fat. If you increase the functionality of the liver, by lowering your consumption of alcohol and junk food, you can reduce the stress on the pancreas (which produces insulin).
The key to managing blood sugar levels, especially if you are dealing with aberrations, is to be conscious of what's on your plate. Plan small, regular meals so that there is no drastic insulin surge (often post binge eating) that your system has to deal with. What you get from carbohydrates, fats and proteins are sufficient for someone leading a moderately active life. If you have too much sugar in your body, and not enough potassium, it gets converted to fat. That's why it pays to include potassium-rich sources in your diet. If you are trying to maintain blood sugar levels, the best diet is one which is your basic, healthy diet. "According to Ayurveda, food is the primary medicine that helps to normalise any health-related issue. Type 2 Diabetes can be managed and even reversed with modifications in one's lifestyle habits," explains Ramesh, who authored The Ayurvedic Cookbook with the aim to offer traditional recipes that are high in nutritional and medicinal values. Traditional Indian recipes, wherein meat is cooked with spices, has its roots in food compatibility. For instance, cinnamon improves insulin sensitivity and lowers blood glucose levels.
Since lowering blood sugar levels also helps in weight loss, many weight watchers look to a diabetic diet (one which restricts insulin spikes) for reference on what to eat. A nutrient-rich, low-carb diet works best for those diagnosed with diabetes. The core of a diabetes diet actually is the glycemic index (GI), which is a value given to foods based on the influence they have over blood sugars in the body. In simple terms, foods low on GI (55 or lesser) tend to release glucose slowly and steadily into the bloodstream, thereby balancing the insulin levels. Foods with a high GI spike insulin production as they release sugar immediately. However, the focus of a diabetic diet should not be just on GI values but preparing meals with a low GI load. "Never ever have simple sugars like honey or jaggery alone. These should always be coupled with another food source, or there will be an instant elevation in blood sugar levels," advises Dr Bhargava.
Here are some foods that can help more than others to prevent and even reverse diabetes. And what's more? They also help you manage weight and get healthier and smoother skin.
All diets, whether low-carb, high-fat, Mediterranean or keto have one thing in common—a high quantity of vegetables. Spinach, chard, broccoli, kale are good sources of vitamins, antioxidants and polyphenols—which all help reduce inflammation, blood pressure and blood sugar levels. Liver loves all that is bitter—so add bitter gourd and fenugreek to your intake too.
Fatty fish are high in omega 3 fatty acids and are a good source of protein. Balance your white rice with a serving of mackerel, salmon, anchovies or sardines.
They are high in fibre, low in carbs and contain healthy essential fats. Reach for hazelnuts, walnuts and almonds. Try to eat them raw, as roasting them changes their fat structure. Keep portion control in mind too, because these ingredients are dense in calories.
Anything that you see bearing the words 'lite', 'skimmed' or 'low-fat' is best avoided, as they lower the fat and replace it with carbohydrates. You might want to go on a low-fat diet if you are watching your weight, but if you are a diabetic, you need the good fat to be able to heal the entire system. Olive oil contains oleic acid, which is a type of monosaturated fat that's been shown to improve triglycerides and HDL—which in turn regulate type 2 diabetes. Avocado helps control blood sugar levels, as its fat and fibre content takes longer to digest and slows the absorption of other carbohydrates at the same time.
Berries are excellent additions to any diet since they have a low glycemic index, so they don't raise your blood sugar very much. These are the healthiest, as not only are they low in calories, but also feature higher levels of antioxidants. Look for blueberries, raspberries and strawberries.
When it comes to foods for type 2 diabetes, not all potatoes are created equal. "These are found in boiled and then cooled potatoes, boiled and cooled rice, raw plantains and some yams. Once you cool these foods—potatoes and rice—the starch gets resistant to enzymes and digests slowly, releasing glucose gradually in the bloodstream. Hence they become low glycemic," explains nutrition consultant Sangeeta Khanna. Sweet potatoes are perfect for any plate, but especially for people with diabetes. Compared to white potatoes, sweet potatoes are lower on the glycemic index and high in Vitamin A. The fibre helps with blood glucose control and weight management, and the potassium helps control blood pressure.
To minimise insulin-spikes, try to avoid refined and/or heavily processed carbohydrates. Millets like bajra, jowar and ragi are the ones to pick.
Raw seeds such as flax, sunflower, pumpkin, chia and sesame seeds are high in fibre, minerals and vitamins.
A study from Harvard University proved that a cup of beans or lentils each day, when combined with a low glycemic diet, helped lower blood sugar levels and coronary artery disease risk in patients with type 2 diabetes. Beans are good sources of fibre and help lower cholesterol. They (including rajma, chickpea, black chana) have an ideal mix of high quality carbohydrates, lean protein, and soluble fibre, which helps stabilise your body's blood sugar levels and keeps hunger in check.


1. Bunting, I am in love with bunting I think it's a really nice touch for a bedroom or maybe even a living room. It just gives your room some colour without being too much. The bunting which I have is really long so as you can see in the picture it hangs on my frame of my window. This is also a great way of putting it up without having to use nails or anything else like that. Saves time and money.
2. Photo frames. Memories are so important to me so I always take pictures wherever I go. I also get them printed out so that I can look around my room and see the great times I have had. It also helps to cheer me up when I'm down. I got a really nice photo frame from The Range, wasn't much at all and it looks really nice.
3. If you have a big space on your wall and you don't know what to fill it with but you also want it to look grown up. Then how about adding a cute canvas of something you are into or love. Like mine is Marvel. As I am a huge fan. I think it looks awesome in this space and because of the colour of my wall it really draws your eye into looking at it.
4. Pin boards are a great way of keeping your memories on show whilst looking nice as well. So on mine I have cinema tickets, post cards, key rings from the places I have been to and pictures of me and my friends.
5. Shelves are a great way of putting your things on and the good thing about them is that if you don't like where something is you can just change it and swap things around. So I have books, pictures and other memories things on there. Also, having things on a high shelve means you have more floor space for other things.
Which of these 5 things will you use in your room, or have you already got any of these?
What thing would you recommend to put in my room to make it look better?
Hey! Lovely to hear from you. I'm glad you enjoyed reading this blog.