The Irish Country House

Its Past, Present and Future

Terence Dooley, Christopher Ridgway

• Publisher: Four Courts Press
• Year: 2020
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781846828867
• Subtopic: History of Architecture
• Index: History

This collection of essays emanates from the Annual Historic Houses of Ireland Conference held at National University of Ireland, Maynooth, which provides focus and recognition for new scholarship and other developments in the field of historic house studies. *** "Interesting reading...we have come a long way in reimagining the country house." -- Irish Arts Review *** "This book provides a long and intensely interesting argument for the preservation not only of a house itself but of its written records, its muniments. For these are the history of the place, of the estate, of the village or town, of the townland, of its farms and holdings...celebrates above all the ability of such places to transform themselves, time after time." -- Irish Examine *** "From academics interested in accessing some of the latest research in the field of historic house, estate and demesne landscape studies, to those involved in the management and running of these houses as educational facilities and tourist attractions, to local and state authorities and the general public, this well illustrated, very readable book comes highly recommended." -- Irish Literary Supplement [Subject: History, Irish Studies]

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• List of abbreviations
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1. Biography and the meaning of an Irish country house: William Conolly and Castletown
• 2. An absentee family’s suburban demesne: the making of Mount Merrion, Co. Dublin
• Gothic in post-Union Ireland: the uses of the past in Ardare, Co. Limerick
• 4. Irish landlords and the Wyndham Land Act, 1903
• 5. The burning of country houses in Co. Offaly during the revolutionary period, 1920-3
• 6. ‘Ascendancy’s … last big jamboree’: big house society in Northern Ireland, 1921-69
• 7. ‘It was like a scene from the ball in ‘Gone with the Wind’: social life at Castle Hyde, 1931-88
• 8. The ‘Music in the Irish Country House’ project: origins and objectives
• 9. Education and the historic house: where the past has a value for the future
• 10. Making and meaning in the country house: new perspectives in England, Ireland, and Scotland
• 11. The twilight of the ascendancy and the big house: a view from the twenty-first century
• List of illustrations
• Index