Landed Estates
University of Galway

Mahon/Pakenham-Mahon

Family title

Baron Hartland

Estate(s)

Name Description
Mahon/Pakenham-Mahon In February 1666 Captain Nicholas Mahon was granted over 2,700 acres in the barony of Roscommon and in July 1678 he was granted over 3,000 acres in the baronies of Roscommon and Ballintober county Roscommon. The latter became the Manor of Ballynamully or Strokestown, 500 acres to be held as demesne. Thomas Mahon represented the borough of Roscommon 1739-1763 and the county from 1763-1782. His son and heir, Maurice Mahon, was created Baron Hartland of Strokestown in July 1800. The Honourable S. Mahon was a member of the Grand Panel of county Roscommon in 1828. The Ordnance Survey Name Books record Thomas Conry as agent to Lord Hartland. The title died out with the death in 1845 of Maurice, 3rd Baron Hartland. He was succeeded by his cousin, Major Denis Mahon, who was murdered in 1847. Grace Catherine Mahon, the heiress, married Henry Sandford Pakenham, eldest son of the Honourable and Reverend Henry Pakenham and they took the additional name of Mahon. Their only son Henry had one child, a daughter Olive. The estate of the Rev Henry Pakenham, Dean of St Patrick’s, Dublin, was partly in the parish of Killare, county Westmeath. In the mid-1870s Henry Pakenham of Strokestown, county Roscommon owned 632 acres in county Westmeath. In the 1850s Henry Sandford Pakenham-Mahon held land in the county Roscommon parishes of Dysart, barony of Athlone, Kilglass and Kilmore, barony of Ballintober North, Kilbride, Kilgefin, barony of Ballintober South, Cloonfinlough, Bumlin, Aughrim, Elphin, Kilbride, Kiltrustan, Lissonuffy, barony of Roscommon. In the 1870s the Pakenham Mahon estate amounted to almost 27,000 acres in county Roscommon. Over 8,600 acres of the Mahon estate was vested in the Congested Districts' Board in March 1911 and July 1912. The Strokestown House archive is now located at the OPW-NUI Maynooth Archive and Research Centre at Castletown, county Kildare.
Pakenham Henry Pakenham, born 1611, was granted lands in county Wexford and at Tullynally, county Westmeath in the mid-17th century. In 1739 his great-grandson, Thomas, married Elizabeth, daughter and sole heir of Michael Cuff and niece of Ambrose Aungier, 2nd and last Earl of Longford (1st creation). In 1756 he was created Baron Longford. In 1785 his wife became Countess of Longford. Their grandson, another Thomas, [3rd Baron], inherited the Earldom of Longford from his grandmother in 1794. At the time of Griffith’s Valuation (publ. 1854) Edward Michael Pakenham, 3rd Earl of Longford, owned a very extensive estate in the parish of Killucan, county Westmeath with much smaller acreages in the parishes of Castlelost, Killare and Rathgarve. In the mid-1870s the 4th Earl’s county Westmeath estate was recorded as amounting to 15,014 acres, with an estate of 4,555 acres in county Longford and 420 acres in county Dublin. The estate was among the principal lessors in the parishes of Ballymacormick and Templemichael in the baronies of Ardagh and Longford, County Longford and in the parishes of Mayne and Rathgarve, barony of Fore, County Westmeath The Honourable and Reverend Henry Pakenham was the fifth son of Edward Michael Pakenham, 2nd Baron Longford. In 1822 he married Eliza Catherine Sandford, sister and co -heiress of Henry Sandford, 2nd Lord Mountsandford. At the time of Griffith's Valuation the Pakenham estate in county Roscommon was in the parishes of Dysart and Fuerty, barony of Athlone, Kilbride and Roscommon, barony of Ballintober South and Ballintober, Baslick and Kilcorkey, barony of Castlereagh. It amounted to over 3,000 acres.
Knox (Strokestown) In 1760 George Knox of Prehen, county Derry married Jane, sister of Maurice Mahon Lord Hartland and this Knox family had landed interests in county Roscommon for at least two succeeding generations. A grandson George Knox of Clonfree married Caroline Hawkes of Briarfield in 1827 and their daughter married John Theobald Dillon of Mount Dillon.