The Uí Cléirigh clan of Co Limerick
Family history of many present day Uí Cléirighs from County Limerick tell that they are descended from Uillaim (William) Uí Cléirigh, an older brother of Br Mícheál Uí Cléirigh, who departed Kilbarron in Tír Connaill in the early part of the 17th Century most likely sometime after the Flight of the Earls in 1607. By 1609 their clan lands near Ballyshannon, at Kilbarron, had been confiscated and divided between Trinity College and the Bishop of Raphoe.
As well as performing scholarly duties for the ruling O’Donnells, the family were ereneachs to the Cistertian Abbey of Assaroe. Ereneachs performed duties as land stewards to monastic foundations, collecting rents and managing the land whilst the monks would concentrate on more heavenly matters. The Uí Cleirigh clan like many others in the same situation found that their status and income was served a ruinous blow with their main sources of revenue taken from them. Their choices were stark either leave or accept the new reality and become tenants to the new owners of their former lands.
It is said that Uilaimm travelled with his wider family members, belongings and livestock down to an area beside Lough Gur where they settled to farm though later leasing land at Gibbonstown in the parish of Kilbready Major. At this time these lands belonged to Sir Maurice Hurley of Knockalong a descendent of the Teige Uí hUirthile, Lord of Knockalong in south east Co Limerick.
What is the evidence of this journey? In the family tree of the Uí Cléirighs of Kilbarron outlined by Fr Paul Walsh in his book the ‘Uí Cléirighs of Tír Connaill’ (much of the information gleaned from the Uí Cléirigh book of Genealogy written by CúCoigcríche (Cugory) Ui Cléirigh in the 1660s) he notes three branches or sliochts of the clan; Sliocht Tuathal, (the senior branch headed by Lughaidh Uí Cléirigh, chief Ollamh to the Uí Domhnaills) Sliocht Diarmaida and Sliocht Giolla Riabhach, he places Br Mícheál as part of the Sliocht Diarmaida whose eldest brother is named Uillaim. Might this be the Uillaim who left Tír Connaill and travelled south to the area of Lough Gur?
In the Census conducted in 1659 in a list of “Irish” families living in each barony in County Limerick the only Barony with the name O’Clery listed is in the Barony of Smallcounty with nine families noted. Lough Gur is situated in this barony.
By this time the lands at Lough Gur had been confiscated from the O’Hurley family and in the Downs Survey of 1652 John Bulinbrooke is listed as the owner. By the time of the Census of 1659 takes place, William Weeks is listed as the owner of these lands.
At some time afterwards the main centre of the O’Clerys became Gibbonstown and Bulgaden in the parish of Athenesie some miles from Lough Gur in the Barony of Coshlea. These lands at the time of the Civil Survey in 1652 belonged to Henry Wall, listed as an “Irish Papist” later confiscated and became part of the estate of the Cromwellian officer, Captain Hugh Massey who was awarded 3,055 acres of confiscated lands in County Limerick in 1652.
James Clery who has extensively researched the history of his family has written that, “These lands farmed by the Clerys in the townlands of Gibbonstown, Ballycullane, and Ballygrennan, were owned mainly by large Landlords such as Richard Grices, John Ponsonby, Richard Smyth, and much later the Wise family of Cork,
It was only in the early twentieth century that the Clerys could buy out the freehold to the lands that they farmed.
In 1666 Richard Grice was given 909 acres of land for services rendered to the crown during the crushing of the rebellion of 1641 to 1653. In the townland of Ballycullane he got 404 acres, where he built his residence on the finest of the land in that townland. He received 232 acres in Gibbonstown. On the old maps this is referred to as Ballyqueem or Ballyqueen. In Mountfox he received 139 acres, Among some of his other holdings were lands in Gibbonstown, Ballingaddy, Ardpatrick, and Ballinscaula.
Henry Wall is listed in 1641 as owner of the land in Gibbonstown, and later in 1670 the owners are listed as Sir John Ponsoby, Hugh Massey, and Richard Grice. The Primary Valuations of 1852 list Richard Smyth as the owner of Gibbonstown lands
Following the Smyths, the ownership of the lands of Ballycullane and Gibbonstown came into the hands of the Wise family from Cork City.. A deed of 1896 lists Francis Wise of North Mall, Cork, as previous owner of 346 acres in Ballycullane, 436 acres in Ballygrennan, 540 acres in Gibbonstown, and 34 acres in Bulgaden Eady. The same deed also makes reference to his nephew Francis Wise Low of Kilshane, Co Tipperary. The Wise family had businesses in Cork City going back several generations”
The Massey family’s main residence was at Duntryleague near Galbally. The family remained in ownership of this and other lands in various other counties up until the mid 19th Century but by 1915 had sold most of these lands to others or the Irish land commission.
In Griffith’s valuation which took place in Limerick County in 1852, the barony with the most Cleary named tenancies is Coshlea with over one hundred listed, whilst Smallcounty has only twenty.
The picture is somewhat further confused by the fact that the ancestral lands of Uí Cléireacháin clan, descended from Scannlan, King of the Ui Fidghenti, who died in 781, was in the nearby barony of Coshma. The Uí Cléireacháin name has been anglicised as Clerihan or Clarkson but the name is not found as a name listed in Griffith’s Valuation anywhere – Might he have listed any of this surname name as Cleary? Though by the time of the 1901 census of Ireland the only Clerihans listed are found in County Tipperary.
The Uí Cléirigh name in Limerick is rendered as O’Clery or Clery and they have in their ancestry many notables such as Chevalier Patrick Keyes O’Clery who sat as a member of Parliament for Wexford in the 1870s for the Irish Home Rule party; General Sir Cornelius Francis Clery who commanded the second division during the Second Boer War in 1899 and Michael John Clery, the founder of the well known Dublin department store “Clerys” now sadly closed to name but a few.
Today the Clery name is one of the most popular family names in County Limerick.