SUPPORTERS OF FARMERS in Lismore, Co Waterford who are locked in a standoff with the Duke of Devonshire over rent hikes staged a protest in London at a bookshop owned by the aristocrat today.

The small group occupied the Heywood Hill store, which specialises in rare books, in response to the escalating dispute.

Some were part of the UK city’s Terence MacSwiney Commemoration Committee, set up in tribute to the former Lord Mayor of Cork during the War of Independence.

The farmers tend to land on the Lismore estate in the Knockmealdown mountains, which is owned by the duke, Peregrine Cavendish.

He is accused of seeking to raise rent for some farmers from €520 per hectare to €5,200.

The protest has brought fresh attention to a dispute between the hill farmers in the Knockmealdown mountains.

Thomas Fitzgerald, who is one of the farmers in dispute with the duke, told The Journal that friends of some of the farmers who are based in London decided to take up the cause to help draw attention to the dispute.

He claimed that farmers have seen attempts to progressively raise their rent over the past 12 years – from €5 over a decade ago to now €5,200.

Fitzgerald traces his own family’s involvement in farming sheep in the Knockmealdowns back to the 1600s.

“We’re getting nowhere with it and we want to negotiate on it,” Fitzgerald said, “so the lads then in London asked what could they do.

“They knew the duke has a book shop in London so they did a sit-in protest to draw attention it, to say to the duke that this is not just a local story.”

Fitzgerald said a small number of those involved hailed from Lismore, but others were young people born in London who have Irish parents.

“It’s hitting the nerve that the landlords still have a hold on the land here,” the Co Waterford farmer said.

When contacted, a spokesperson for the Lismore Estate said a rent review was conducted in 2023 which informed the proposed rents for tenants of the Knockmealdown Mountains on the Lismore Estate, up to and including 2029.

“This proposal was guided by an independent agricultural consultant and was shared with the graziers in 2024,” the spokesperson said.

“It 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.

“The 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.”

Local Sinn Féin TD Conor McGuinness has said the government must urgently intervene in the Knockmealdown rent dispute.

“These are farming families whose people have worked these mountains for generations, and they are now being hit with a reported 900% rent increase that would drive them off the land. I stand with them and with those protesting in solidarity with them,” McGuinness said.