The Irish country house : a social history
Peter Somerville-Large, Mark Fiennes (Photographer)
"For seven hundred years the Ascendancy dominated Ireland. Within their demesnes landlords built their great houses, landscaped their parks and spent wealth gathered from rents. In the twentieth century they vanished, leaving behind ruins and a reputation for being ogres. Making use of letters, diaries, memoirs, estate documents, inventories, travellers' tales and family reminiscences, Peter Somerville-Large examines the lifestyle of those described by a nineteenth-century traveller as "rural sovereigns". He quotes from the writings of George Moore, Elizabeth Bowen, Edith Somerville, Violet Martin and Molly Keane. He describes the elegance, discomfort and danger associated with castle and mansion. Somerville-Large examines the wretched relationship between landlord and tenant, the flawed concept of "loyalty" and the terrors of the land war. The injustice and horror of eviction are discussed. He dwells on ennui endured in remote, rain-swept places. Among the hunting squires, parvenues, impoverished clergymen and unhappy Englishwomen, those assembled in these pages include the great Earl of Kildare, the Earl of Cork, Spenser, Swift, Parnell, Douglas Hyde, Lady Gregory and scores of other memorable characters who created or inhabited Norman fortresses, Georgian mansions, modest rectories and gaunt fantasies of the Gothic revival. Here is a story of conquest, ambition, acquisition and loss; shameful, grim, hilarious, unedifying and glorious."--Jacket
History
x, 372 pages : illustrations, map ; 26 cm
9781856192378, 9781856197656, 1856192377, 1856197654
33045989