William Kelly of Portrane

William Kelly was a modernizing influence on Irish farming whose tillage practices and self-invented mangelwurzel bread helped save many lives in Donabate and Portrane during the Great Famine.

A leading light in the tenants' rights leagues of the 1870s, he was a council member of the Irish Home Rule League, one of the founding fathers of the Land League and a signatory to a pivotal document of Irish history. A champion of the poor, he was largely forgotten following his death in 1881.