In June 1569, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland approved of the English adventurers' offer to plant Munster, and in 1585 a survey for the plantation of the province was presented to him. Three years later, Phane Beecher of London received a grant of the castle of O'Mahony, alias O'Mahown's castle, and a moiety of the country and cantred of Kilnalmechi, alias Kinalmechi, which lies on both sides of the river Bandon and adjoins Carbery on the south, and Muskery on the north. In 1594, Phane, dean of Roscarbry, was numbered among the members of an ecclesiastical commission.
Mac Lysaght's Surnames of Ireland spells this Becher, a rendering occasionally found in documents, though current telephone directories in the State list Beecher 51 times to a single Becher.
Of these, 30 are in the mainly Cork 02 area and 15 in the 05 area of south Leinster. This English surname means "one who lives by a beech-tree".
O'Hart's Irish Pedigrees says that a son of Henry Baldwin who settled in Ireland married a niece of Colonel Beecher of Sherkin, indications being that the colonel was born around 1610. The Kenmare Manuscripts noted that Mr Beecher's estate bounded Kenmare's land at Glauncreagh and Droumsullivan, and it notes that two dozen oars from the Kenmare estate had been supplied to Colonel Beecher's man servant.
The "census" of 1659 lists Thomas, Henry and Susan Beecher as Tituladoes in the Co Cork townland of Assadown in the parish of the same name. In neighbouring Ballymore, in the parish of Tullagh, Lyonell Beecher was one of two Tituladoes.
The single Beecher to feature on Taylor & Skinner's 1778 Maps of the Roads of Ire- land was at Hollybrook, north of Skibbereen. There are seven Beechers in the 1814 Directory, all in the Skibbereen area, except one at Rockcastle, Bandon. But were there seven?
There are two Henry Beechers, esqrs, one at Assadown and the other at Aughadown. As the first is not to be found in the Index of Townlands, Towns, Parishes and Baronies of Ireland, and Aghadown is, we assume that this was one and the same place. Later in the parish of Skibbereen, this is from Achadh an Duin, "the field of the ring-fort".
Owners of Land of One Acre and Up- wards (1876) lists eight Be(e)cher holdings, all in Co Cork. There were 18,933 acres of Sir Henry Wrixton Becher, Ballygiblin, Mallow; 2,101 acres at Ballyduvane, Clonakilty; 935 acres at Lochine; and smaller holdings at Castlehyde, Lakelands, and Ballygiblin.
Aghadown was not a Beecher holding in 1876. Here on a single acre was Sarah Anne Attridge. Anne Attridge possessed two acres at Lakeview and the 564-acre holding at Lakeview was in the possession of the representatives of Philip and Thomas Attridge.
The Penguin Dictionary of Surnames says that Attridge, though formally might betimes be the locative "at the rigde", it is more likely to be first-name "noble powerful". Of the 22 entries in the telephone directories south of the Border, 18 are in the 02 Cork area.
A class of Protestant farmer in the south of Ireland that was neither "gentry" nor "poor cottier" nor "land agent", was found in pockets throughout the South, usually the result of long-forgotten plantation policy (sometimes by individual lords of the soil over a long period). One such pocket was in the area from Bandon west to Bantry and south to Skibbereen (Protestant Society and Politics in Cork 1812-1844: Ian d'Alton).
The Attridges were among those in Ballydehob. Thomas Atbridge esq, Greenmount, is found in the 1814 Directory, and this misrendering is found again in the list of subscribers to Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837).
During and after the Great Famine in Ireland, the Jeanie Johnston transported thousands of Irish emigrants to the US and Canada. Unlike the infamous "coffin ships" of the time, the Jeanie Johnston never lost a single passenger to disease or to the sea during 16 trans-Atlantic voyages, under the command of Capt James Attridge from Castletownsend, Co Cork. Early next year a full-size replica will visit over 20 cities in the US and Canada.
