The history covered by this book goes back to the Land Acts of the late 19th century, where the roots of ground rents often lay. The book chronicles the persistent burden of ground rents on property owners and tenants across various regions of Ireland. Pat Byrne takes the reader to Lough Derg in Donegal, to Cappoquin in Waterford, Midleton, Co. Cork and Kingscourt in Cavan. The focus of this odyssey was to explore both the history of ground rents nationally and the experiences of some local communities who sought to be rid of them.

Inevitably, we arrive at the story of ground rents in Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan, where the battle between local residents and the entity now known as JES Holdings has gone well into three decades. It is the story of people like Gus O’Gorman and Jim and Colm McBride, and a host of Carrickmacross people, political figures, legal people and landlords. Pat Byrne’s painstaking research over many years tells the story of a town where, in essence, one side of the street was subject to ground rents while the other was not, creating a significant economic drag on the community and providing the resultant book with its title.