Rundale System of Land Tenure

The Rundale system of land tenure was practiced widely in pre-famine Ireland. It was used more so in areas of marginal land and coastal regions. A basic principle of the system was that when land was being subdivided each tenant should be afforded access to all of the available land types and in the case of coastal regions, access to the shore for seaweed as a source of fertiliser. This, mostly, suited Landlords as it enabled them to extract maximum rent from each tenant farmer.

In the case of the Doherty (Banker) farm, the Rundale sub-division between two brothers was as follows: arable fields divided two thirds / one third and the grazing land was held in common between them.

Origin of the word, Rundale, is uncertain but in Ordnance Survey Memoirs, Parish of Killygarvan 1834, it is referred to as "Run & Dale".
The system worked well within one family group as it permitted economic survival for each of the tenants but when continued subdivision took place between relatives the system eventually got out of hand.

In the case of the Townland of Elly, Killygarvan Parish, it was not until the 1950's that the Irish Land Commission succeeded in sorting the matter out by swapping and reallocating parcels of land between several owners.

In 1830, Nathaniel Clements 2nd Earl of Leitrim embarked on "squaring farms" on his Fanad estate and decreed that his tenants were to surrender their Rundale plots as their leases expired and move to "single strips or cuts" allocated by his agent. This caused problems because some tenants did not want to move and others felt they that were being short changed with regard to quality & quantity of the land being offered.