{"id":383819,"date":"2026-04-05T22:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T22:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/383819\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T22:54:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T22:54:10","slug":"protesters-occupy-mayfair-bookshop-over-irish-land-rent-increases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/383819\/","title":{"rendered":"Protesters occupy Mayfair bookshop over Irish land-rent increases"},"content":{"rendered":"

Protesters backed by Sinn Fein have occupied the Duke of Devonshire\u2019s bookshop, after claims that sheep farmers on his historic Irish estate faced rent increases of about 900 per cent.<\/p>\n

The disturbance at Heywood Hill, in Mayfair, central London, could be catalogued under history, politics, the Easter Rising, aristocracy and economics. It was directed towards the shop\u2019s owner, Peregrine Cavendish, 81, the 12th Duke of Devonshire, who has a 3,237-hectare estate at Lismore, Co Waterford, in the sout east of Ireland.<\/p>\n

Sheep farmers in the rugged Knockmealdown Mountains claim that some of their rents are being increased from \u20ac520 (\u00a3454) per hectare to \u20ac5,200. <\/p>\n

\"FiveSupporters of the sheep farmers in Lismore, County Waterford who have been subject to the land rent increases<\/p>\n

Thomas Fitzgerald, who traces his family\u2019s involvement in sheep farming in the Knockmealdowns to the 1600s, told The Journal<\/a>: \u201cWe\u2019re getting nowhere with it and we want to negotiate on it, so the lads then in London asked what could they do. They knew the duke has a bookshop in London so they did a sit-in protest to draw attention to it, to say to the duke that this is not just a local story.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said that a \u201csmall number\u201d of the protesters hailed from Lismore, but others were young people born in London who had Irish parents. They chanted \u201cEnglish landlords out of Ireland\u201d\u00a0before moving inside to occupy the shop for an hour on Thursday last week.<\/p>\n

It was not clear if any actual farmers were involved. One prominent speaker told the small crowd: \u201cWe stand with the Palestinians, we stand with the Lebanese, and we stand with the Iranians. And we stand today with the people of Lismore\u201d.<\/p>\n

The occupation was supported by the Terence MacSwiney Commemoration Committee, named after the lord mayor of Cork who died on hunger strike after his arrest by the British in 1920 during the Irish war of independence. The committee supported Gerry Adams outside the High Court last month during the civil case<\/a> over his alleged membership of the IRA. Members of the RMT rail union also joined the protest.<\/p>\n

\"ThreeThe protesters were invited into the bookshop for water and coffee by the Duke of Devonshire\u2019s son-in-law<\/p>\n

Heywood Hill<\/a> was described as the favourite bookshop of the late Queen Elizabeth<\/a>, while Evelyn Waugh regarded it as the \u201ccentre for all that was left of fashionable and intellectual London\u201d.<\/p>\n

Nicky Dunne, 55, the Duke\u2019s son-in-law who runs the bookshop, gave a bemused welcome to the protesters, saying: \u201cThank you for coming. You never know what\u2019s going to happen in books.\u201d He offered them water and coffee, explaining: \u201cThere is nothing more hospitable than going to an Irish home, so I want you to feel welcome here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Devonshire family\u2019s seat in England is at Chatsworth, the stately home in the Derbyshire Dales.<\/p>\n

Lismore Castle, the family\u2019s seat in Ireland since 1753, is run by the duke\u2019s heir, William, the Earl of Burlington<\/a>, 56, and his wife, Laura, 54. The family\u2019s various estates and other assets are managed by the Devonshire Group, a diverse collection of businesses and charities.<\/p>\n

\"PeregrinePeregrine Cavendish, 81, the 12th Duke of Devonshire, at Lismore CastleAlamy<\/p>\n

Conor McGuinness, the Sinn Fein representative for Waterford in the Irish parliament and the party\u2019s rural affairs spokesman, this weekend described the dispute as the \u201cunfinished business of 1916\u201d, referring to the Easter Rising<\/a> against British rule.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn injustice is being done to these men \u2014 they have farmed the Knockmealdowns for generations and are now being driven off the land by an absentee landlord, a British aristocrat who is imposing a 900 per cent rent increase,\u201d he wrote on Facebook. \u201cIt\u2019s 2026, not 1846.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SheepThe Lismore Estate said the rent increase for graziers in the Knockmealdown Mountains was the first since 2017Alamy<\/p>\n

Martin Heydon, Ireland\u2019s agriculture minister, told the Irish parliament last month that the government would not intervene in the dispute but it hoped \u201ca resolution can be found\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Lismore Estate said a rent review for tenants was completed in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the first increase in rents for this group of grazing occupiers in the Knockmealdown Mountains since 2017, and ensures that we maintain fair rates for all our agricultural occupiers, be they on the mountains or lower lands,\u201d said a spokeswoman.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rent we have proposed to the graziers is considerably less than the market rent. We have engaged with this group of graziers who object to the rental increase but have not yet received a collective and aligned response from them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The spokesman said the rent increase for the graziers would take the price per hectare from \u20ac5 to \u20ac50 by 2029, which is 25 per cent of the current market rate. The rate for this year is \u20ac25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Protesters backed by Sinn Fein have occupied the Duke of Devonshire\u2019s bookshop, after claims that sheep farmers on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-383819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}