Tithes were a tax imposed on tenant farmers by the established church, the Church of Ireland. This was the main source of income for the clergy and was calculated based on the agricultural potential of the land holdings which were typically categorised in three classes related to yield, and covered both tillage and pasture land. The books are indexed by civil parish which can differ in name and location from Catholic parishes. Originally the tax was levied in kind, but this cumbersome method was replaced by the Tithe composition acts of Parliament in 1823 and 1832 which converted the tithe into a single, fixed charge on the land. The information recorded includes the names of the tenants and the breakdown of the land holding by size, quality and the tax to be levied. In some cases, the landlord is mentioned. It must be borne in mind that this tax was not applied evenly and many exemptions and omissions mean that it is an incomplete record of tenants and their lands.
A Townland Index to the Tithe Applotment Books for the County of Cavan was prepared in 1988 and you can view the listing here.
Browse the Tithe Applotment Books for the entire Cavan county. Data are sourced from https://titheapplotmentbooks.nationalarchives.ie and from https://www.familysearch.org. Many records are misclassified in https://titheapplotmentbooks.nationalarchives.ie but have been corrected here. For example, some Cavan parishes were recorded in the wrong county and some townlands were recorded in the wrong parish. We have used our best efforts to find the missing records and have included them in the table below.
We highly recommend that any search carried out using the table below must be understood in the context of the original source data. Click on the button below to see our guide to finding and understanding the images of the original Tithe Applotment Books and the issues raised in their transcription.
Search the Tithe Applotment Books for Cavan here:
Use the column filters to reduce the data by Parish, Townland and Name.
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Tithes were a tax imposed on tenant farmers by the established church, the Church of Ireland. This was the main source of income for the clergy and was calculated based ...
