Handcock (Moydrum)

Family title

Baron Castlemaine

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Estate(s)

Name	Description
Handcock (Moydrum)	The Handcocks were settled at Moydrum Castle, near Athlone, in county Westmeath from the late 17th century. The Right Honourable William Handcock was created Baron Castlemaine in December 1812. At the time of Griffith's Valuation Lord Castlemaine held land in the parish of Kilglass, barony of Ballintober North, county Roscommon. Hon. Charles Handcock and his wife Elizabeth sold the fee simple of an estate in the barony of Athlone in the Encumbered Estates Court in 1856. The Freeman's Journal noted R. Carroll as the purchaser. In the 1870s Lord Castlemaine's estate in county Roscommon amounted to 597 acres. In county Westmeath he owned 11,444 acres. The Handcock family were resident in county Westmeath from the seventeenth century. In 1666, William Handcock was granted over 8,000 acres in county Westmeath with other lands in counties Roscommon and Kilkenny. Some 5,000 acres of the county Westmeath lands were made into the Manor of Twyford. William Handcock, born 1766, was elevated to the peerage in 1812 as Lord Castlemaine. In the same year Sir Richard Morrison was employed to redesign the existing mansion at Moydrum. Lord Castlemaine’s county Westmeath estate was mainly located in the parishes of Kilkenny West, Ballyloughloe, Kilcleagh and St Mary’s Athlone. Parts of the estate were sold in the early 20th century and after the burning of Moydrum in 1921 the Castlemaines moved to live in London. Donal O’Brien gives a detailed account of this family in his book ‘The houses and landed families of Westmeath’.
Handcock	Patrick Melvin writes that Carrowntryla was originally a Burke property, which was sold in 1753 to Anne Henry, widow of Hugh Henry, a Dublin banker, who died in 1743. Carrowntryla passed to William Henry who had an only daughter, Anne, who married William Handcock in 1802. These Handcocks shared a common ancestor with the Barons Castlemaine and both William Handcock's father and grandfather were clergymen. There was a legal dispute over the Handcock succession to the Carrownatryla estate. The Handcock estate was situated in the parishes of Addergoole, Dunmore, Tuam and Boyounagh in the baronies of Dunmore, Ballymoe and Clare, county Galway. William Henry Handcock married Catherine Josephine Kelly and left three daughters at the time of his death in 1842. In 1851 part of the estate was sold in the Encumbered Estates Court. The purchaser was Patrick Nolan, in trust. A dispute arose over ownership of the estate in the 1850s between John Delacour and John Stratford Handcock. Delacour was compensated but this eventually led to the sale of the estate in the mid 1890s to the mortgagees, Sir Henry Lopes and the representatives of Mr Fitzwilliam Dick. In the 1870s John Handcock's estate in county Galway amounted to 7,865 acres. Major Gerald Stratford Handcock bought back the house and a hundred acres in 1928.