Very few nineteenth century Irish census records survive either having been destroyed by government order, pulped for paper during WW1 or lost in the Public Record Office fire during the Civil War in 1922. As a result what is known as Griffith’s Valuation is one of the most important genealogical records available, acting as a census substitute for the years after the Famine.
Irelands Valuation office conducted its first survey of property ownership in Ireland between the years 1848 and 1867. It was overseen by Sir Richard Griffith hence its' name and the survey was used to determine the amount of tax each person should pay towards the support of the poor within their district. This involved determining the value of all privately held lands and buildings in rural as well as urban areas to figure the rate at which each unit of property could be rented year after year.
The record for Patrick Bourke shows him living in the townland of Dollas Lower in the parish of Croom. He is renting just over 64 acres of land from a John Pigott. The valuation for the land is given as £51 (which represents what it would cost to rent it for a year) and the house at £3. This house valuation indicates that the family would have lived in a stone wall house with a thatched roof with less than 5 rooms. Patrick also has a tenant on his land, a lady called Eleanor Cantillon who lived in a house with a valuation of 6 shillings. This indicates that she lived in a one or two room mud cabin with a thatched roof. As she is listed as the head of household she most likely was a widow.
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