A short historical background to Death in Garrydangan.

The Land Commission, and the Keanes and Heneghans of the novel.
The 1923 Land Act which was primarily associated with the completion of land purchase that had been begun by the British land purchase acts of the previous century sets the scene. Provision was made for compulsory purchase of land that could could now be compulsorily purchased and divided out to local families. The Keanes and Heneghans in the novel were such families. They ‘migrated’ from Mayo to the midlands to take up farms there.
These Mayo families came from the so-called 'congested districts areas' that had been designated under the 1891 Land Act as necessitating remedial rural development, particularly with regard to the reform of land structure in the Ireland of the time.
At the time of independence (1920-21) an average of around 65 per cent of all agricultural holdings in each of the counties outside the designated congested areas came under the definition of 'uneconomic' as set out by the Land Commission, that is, below £10 valuation or roughly 20 acres of 'reasonable' land. To remedy this there was a massive scheme to redistribute land to make farms viable.

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