Women and the Country House in Ireland and Britain

Terence Dooley, Maeve O'Riordan, Christopher Ridgway

• Publisher: Four Courts Press
• Year: 2018
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781846827495
• Subtopic: Women in History
• Index: History

In recent years, the role of women in country houses and estates across Ireland and the UK has been the focus of greater attention. Chatelaines, mothers, wives, daughters, widows, sisters, housekeepers, and maids were ever-present figures in the microcosm of the country house. New research has begun to reveal the extent of their involvement in managing households and estates, influencing design, adopting public roles, championing good causes, as well as raising families and committing their thoughts to paper in literary expression. This volume of essays, many of which draw on hitherto unseen family archives, will bring new perspectives to our understanding of the country house as a place where many women often held powerful roles. Contributors include: Amy Boyinton (U Cambridge), Kerry Bristol (U Leeds), Philip Bull (La Trobe U, Melbourne), Anne Casement (ind.), Jonathan Cherry (Maynooth U), Arlene Crampsie (Maynooth U), Caroline Dakers (Central St Martins), William Fraher (U Limerick), Judith Hill (Trinity College Dublin), Edmund Joyce (Carlow IT ), Ruth Larsen (U Derby), Anna Pilz (University College Cork), Lowri Ann Rees (Bangor U), Ciar???¡n Reilly (Maynooth U), Regina Sexton (University College Cork), Brendan Twomey (Trinity College Dublin), and Fiona White (Galway-Mayo IT). [Subject: History, Women's History, Gender Studies, Archives, Home Design, Sociology, Irish Studies, British Studies]

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The architectural endeavours of the widowed Jemima Yorke, Marchioness Grey
• 2 Families are ‘sometimes … the best at a distance’: sisters and sisters-in-law at Nostell Priory, West Yorkshire
• 3 Five women of Monksgrange
• 4 Declaring loyalty to the Union: the women of Ulster’s country houses and the organization of Ulster Day
• 5 Madeline Wyndham of Clouds and Mabel Morrison of Fonthill
• 6 Catherine Maria Bury of Charleville Castle, Co. Offaly, and the design of the country house, 1800–12
• 7 Lady Harriet Kavanagh of Borris House, 1800–85, matriarch and guardian of the future
• 8 Sisterly guidance: elite women, sorority and the life cycle, 1770–1860
• 9 ‘Lasting monuments’: Lady Gregory’s domesticated landscape and forestry
• 10 ‘I serve my God, and I fear not man’: the Rebecca Riots and a female landowner’s response to Welsh rural protest, 1843–4
• 11 The country house and the Great Famine: Mildred Darby’s novel, The hunger
• 12 Rosalind Howard, the contradictory countess of Carlisle
• 13 Elite women and their recipe books: the case of Dorothy Parsons and her Booke of Choyce Receipts, all written with her ownehand in 1666
• 14 ‘I will do myself the pleasure of now writing to you’; Louisa Conolly’s letters to her sister, Sarah Bunbury
• 15 Louisa Moore of Moore Hall: a life in letters
• List of Contributors
• Index