Milford Mills and the creation of a gentry powerbase:
the Alexanders of Co. Carlow, 1790-1870
Kinsella, Shay
(2015)
Milford Mills and the creation of a gentry powerbase:
the Alexanders of Co. Carlow, 1790-1870.
PhD thesis, Dublin City University.
This thesis assesses the origins, development and decline o f an industrial and landed
powerbase at Milford, Co. Carlow, from 1790 to 1870.
John Alexander I (1764-1843), a Protestant merchant from Belfast, arrived in Carlow in
1784 and, due to a combination o f protective government legislation and his own
considerable commercial talent, had created the largest milling complex in Ireland by the
1840s. The infrastructures, activities, successes and beneficial socio-economic impact o f
the mills saw Milford develop as a significant centre o f population in the county.
The vast profits o f John Alexander & Co. enabled the Alexander family to achieve
considerable social and political power. With their purchase o f a small landed estate, the
Alexanders constructed a gentry identity among the county’s elite, rising to its upper
echelons by 1853 — all the more surprising given Carlow’s traditional resistance to the
social elevation o f the merchant community. The emergence o f Milford as a model
landed estate enhanced the family’s reputation at a county and wider level. In making the
claim that this ascent was remarkable, the foundations and mechanics o f this powerbase,
as well as the tensions therein, are outlined.
In the second generation, the Alexanders’ politics swung from a liberal paternalism to
Tory self-protectionism in a bid to consolidate their privileged socio-political position.
This set landlord and tenant at odds in Milford, and transformed the Alexanders’ fame
into notoriety, with electoral controversies in the area receiving national and international
attention.
W ith the decline o f their milling supremacy (due to the repeal o f the Com Laws, accident
and legal disputes), their social and political powers had been fundamentally undermined
by 1870. Despite scholarly neglect, this thesis illustrates and analyses the A lexanders’
centrality and influence at a county, provincial and national level during this period.