The Landed Estate – Self-Sufficient in Food
During their heyday, the Anglo-Irish landed estates provided a large workforce of servants, craftspeople & farmhands and were pioneers in animal husbandry and crop production. Christy Carroll recounts how the Clonbrock demesne was a very self-sufficient enterprise that provided many jobs for the local community. The manor generated its own electricity from a wind apparatus, the gardens produced a wide variety of vegetables and fruits, and the lands sustained sizable herds of cattle and sheep as well as some exotic poultry such as Muscovy ducks and Guinea fowl. The estate’s farmyard was a hive of rural industries including a forge, carpentry shop and slaughter-house.