During the Famine (1845–49), the linen industry in Villierstown died out. Some locals turned to fishing on the Blackwater as a source of employment. The majority of villagers were given work by the Villiers-Stuarts on the estate at Dromana, which itself encompassed Villierstown and beyond as far as Dungarvan and Helvick, where the family occasionally resided in the summer. The Villiers-Stuart family were known to be one of the most civic-minded estate holders in Ireland: earlier Lord Stuart de Decies, himself a Protestant, spent much of his political life furthering the cause of Catholic Emancipation with Daniel O'Connell.