Also corn-acre. (See quots. 1824–27.) In Irish land-system: The letting by a tenant, for the season, of small portions of land ready ploughed and prepared for a crop.
(Originally the plot was given manured, but a later state of matters appears in quot. 1882.)
1824. Major Warburton, Evid. bef. Commons Comm., 20 May, 131. What do you mean by mockground?… Do you not refer to muckground? It may be; they call it corn-acre.
1825. O’Connell, ibid., 25 Feb., 51. What is the con-acre system?… It is a right to plant a crop, paying sometimes 6, 8 or 10 pounds an acre for that right by the single year, and the crop is detained till that rent is made up.
1827. Westm. Rev., Jan. These tenancies are usually termed … corn-acres, or, by corruption of that word, con-acres.
1835. Inglis, Trav. Irel., I. 57. What con-acre means … a farmer manures, ploughs, and in every way prepares a large field to receive a crop. A poorer description of persons rent off portions … a half, a quarter, or an eighth of an acre, for one season, and all that these have to provide is the seed.
1882. P. H. Bagenal, in 19th Cent., Dec., 926. This privilege of conacre having been given, the labourer has to bring manure at his own expense.
attrib. 1838. Athenæum, 773. Conacre rents.
1860. Trollope, Castle Richmond (Tauchn.), II. 171. They [the fields] had been let out under the con-acre system, at so much a rood, for the potato-season.
1881. 19th Cent., March, 536. The willing but wageless conacre man.
