Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History by Joseph Byrne Page A

such as roads or bridges and to provide employment during periods of hardship. See Inland Navigation, Directors General of . From 1831 the new Board of Works, staffed with a national inspectorate of engineers, retained these functions but was also given the remit to oversee relief works, drainage, and to maintain public buildings, ports and harbours. The board supplied the majority of members and influenced the conclusions of many committees and commissions established to consider the state’s role in infrastructural development. In turn it was charged with the regulation of land use and granted the power to levy those who benefited from drainage schemes. By 1845 it had spent over £1 million in grants and loans. During the famine the board supervised massive public works schemes, employing in excess of 600,000 people daily on road construction and drainage in the winter of 1846–7. These works were shut down when soup kitchens were opened to relieve the distressed who, in any case, were often too debilitated to work on the roads. Under the 1870 Landlord and Tenant Act the Board of Works was mandated a role in Gladstone’s tenant-purchase scheme, providing loans of up to two-thirds of the price of the holding conditional upon the payment over 35 years of the sale price plus an annuity of 5%. In 1881 the tenant-purchase scheme was transferred to the Irish Land Commission . Late in the nineteenth century the Board of Works loaned money for the construction of farm buildings and labourers’ cottages and for land improvement. It arbitrated between landlords and the railway companies over the acquisition of land for tracks, was responsible for the maintenance of national monuments and constructed harbours and piers. The Board of Works was re-styled the Office of Public Works after the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. (Griffith, The Irish board ; Lohan, Guide to the archives ; McParland, Public architecture .)
    bobbin . Tightly-bound twists of straw arranged in a decorative row along the ridge of a thatched roof.
    bog . Irish bogs are broadly classified as either raised bogs or blanket bogs. Raised bogs developed in lowland areas and are raised above the level of the surrounding countryside. They were formed between 7,000 and 10,000 years ago as a result of fen growth on the periphery of post-glacial lakes, through silting and the accumulated deposition of debris from water-living plants. As the fen expanded the lakes gradually shrank and a layer of peat was built up. Sphagnum moss, which thrives on the small amounts of nutrients in peaty soils and rainwater, colonised the surface of the peat in hummocks thus creating a raised effect. Blanket bogs, which appeared about 5,000 years ago largely in upland areas in the west, are believed to have formed because of a deterioration in climate, the clearance of woods and agricultural activity. The impact of natural forces and human intervention resulted in leaching and the creation of a layer of iron pan just below the soil surface. This impeded drainage and the resultant waterlogging encouraged an invasion by rushes, the creation of peat and, later, colonisation by sphagnum moss. Continued waterlogging triggered the spread of the bog so that, in time, wide areas of land were blanketed in a layer of peat. (Mitchell, The Shell guide , pp. 122–29.)
    bonaght . See buannacht .
    bona notabilia. In testamentary matters, the case of a person who died possessing goods to the value of £5 or more in a second diocese. In such cases jurisdiction lay not with the diocesan consistorial court but with the prerogative court of the archbishop of Armagh.
    bondsmen . Unfree tenants such as villeins, serfs or betaghs .
    bonnyclabber . (Ir., bainne clabair ) Sour, curdled milk which constituted part of the native Irish diet. It was made by adding rennet from the stomach of a calf to milk, causing it to coagulate.
    booley . (Ir., buaile , a temporary milking place) An