Nick Maxwell By Damian Murphy Birr Castle is superficially a nineteenth-century creation in the Gothic Revival style and, as home to the Parsons family since 1620, it is one of the very few large country houses in Ireland still occupied by direct descendants of its original builder. It can, however, trace its origins back to the thirteenth … Read more
By Brian Hopkins By the 1860s, Ireland was emerging from the devastation of the Great Hunger into an era of relative agricultural prosperity for some that coincided with a revival of Anglo-Irish landlordism. Support for or against landlords became increasingly more pronounced in elections to two-member seats during this decade. Tenant farmers were generally not … Read more
By Fiona Fitzsimons In the 1500s some ‘Murrano’ Jewish families, expelled from Spain by the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, chose to settle in port towns along the Irish coast. The Murranos that settled in Ireland were merchant mariners, with capital and international contacts. In the early modern period they seem to have accepted diplomatic … Read more
By Peter Gray The collapse of Protestant radicalism in Ulster in the wake of the 1798 Rebellion has attracted much historical discussion. From being an epicentre of United Irish activity in the 1790s, Belfast and its rural hinterland appeared to have abandoned such enthusiasms and reoriented themselves to a conservative unionism over the following century. … Read more
By Lar Joye Irish soldiers began to serve in foreign European armies in large numbers after the Nine Years’ War and the defeat at Kinsale in 1603. While many served in specific Irish regiments of the French and Spanish armies, many more served as individuals and officers in Austria and even as far away as … Read more