Meares (Meares Court)

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Estate(s)

Name	Description
Meares (Meares Court)	A Wiltshire family who were granted lands at Rowlandstown now Meares Court, County Westmeath in the mid-17th century and Cornamuckla, County Longford by patent of 1667. Lewis Meares of Meares Court and George Jones of Rathconnell purchased lands in the barony of Rathconrath in 1703 from the Trustees of forfeited estates. The male line died out in 1790 and the estate was inherited by a nephew William Devenish who adopted the surname Meares. At the time of Griffith’s Valuation (publ. 1854) his son John Devenish Meares owned an estate in the parishes of Rathconrath and Piercetown while his grandson Lewis was leasing land from John Rotton in the parish of Ballymorin. In the 1870s John D Meares owned 2,398 acres in the county.
Rotton	This family were resident in Dublin in the early 18th century and married members of the Stearne, Carleton and Putland families. In 1703, a considerable estate in the barony of Farbill, county Westmeath, previously belonging to Redmond and Hugh Mulledy, was conveyed to John Rotton of Dublin, Gent. by the Earl of Albermarle, on payment of £2,000, in trust for Robert Pakenham of Bracklyn. The National Library holds the marriage settlement of John Rotton of Dublin [Junior] who in 1814 married Christina Mary daughter of the Rt Hon John Radcliffe LLD. By a deed dated 8 December 1834 John Rotton senior and his son John Rotton junior both of Bath, Somerset, for the purpose of barring the entail, assigned to John R Dickinson of St Stephen’s Green, 567 acres in the lands of Dalystown, Newbristy and Rathduff, County Westmeath (Abstract of the Deeds Inrolled in Chancery 1834-1839 (1840), 3). Griffith’s Valuation (publ. 1854) records John Rotton’s estate in the parishes of Ballymorin and Rathconrath. In the mid-1870s John Rotton of Newcastle-on-Tyne owned 248 acres in County Westmeath.