Thomas Kearney’s 1817 map of the Levinge estate in Knockdrin, Co. Westmeath, is a particularly fine example of an early nineteenth-century survey of an improving landlord’s estate during the twilight era of landlord paternalism in Ireland. So-called ‘improving landlords’ were committed to implementing the latest scientific developments to modernise their estates in terms of animal … Read more
Illinois native Margaret Hallem was checking up on her Irish roots at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington DC when she mentioned her grandmother, who had been due to sail on the doomed White Star liner Titanic but missed the trip owing to bad weather. She then revealed that her family still had the ticket—one … Read more
Charter schools were intended to solve the problem facing a victorious people taking over a defeated, impoverished country from the 1690s onwards. With almost a quarter of the Irish population killed or exiled, the rest were needed as a labour force for the new masters of the land. Yet how was it possible to trust … Read more
In 1911 Edward Kenny and his wife Anne lived with their four children, Elleanor (17 years), Josephine (14), Anne (6) and baby Edward (‘1 and 6/12’!), in No.1a Whitefriar Place, Dublin. They shared three rooms with Mrs Elizabeth Monaghan (70) and her ‘relative’ Elizabeth (20), the Kenny family occupying two of the rooms and the … Read more
St Mary’s Square was designed by the notable architect A.W.N. Pugin in the 1840s at the height of the ‘Gothic Revival’, extending west of St Joseph’s Square to what is now the south campus of NUI Maynooth. Owing to the limited grant of £30,000 for its construction, Pugin agreed to omit designs for the chapel, … Read more