Nick Maxwell Mitchelstown Castle, Co. Cork, was the inheritance of Wollstonecraft’s employer, Caroline King, Lady Kingsborough. During 1777–8 her husband, Robert King, remodelled it in Palladian style and improved the estate with the assistance of Arthur Young, who described it in A tour in Ireland (1780). Robert and Caroline separated in 1789. Robert died as second earl … Read more
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) is revered by feminists as the author of A vindication of the rights of woman (1792), which advocated the rational education of women as a matter of public and national importance. She also published fiction, travel writing, criticism and educational books. While living in Revolutionary France in 1794, Wollstonecraft gave birth to … Read more
By Lucille Ellis Ennis in the early nineteenth century was characterised by crooked, narrow streets flanked by buildings of post-medieval and eighteenth-century origin. One of the first formal streets developed when in c. 1823 William Greene (d. 1842), a local attorney, built a sizeable house of rough-cut limestone on land owned by Bindon Blood (1775–1855) … Read more
THE FIRST MONUMENT ERECTED ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD TO THE VICTOR OF TRAFALGAR By Dennis Kennedy A water-colour sketch of the Nelson Arch near Castletownshend, Co. Cork, painted by the man who designed and built the arch in 1805, has resurfaced after 200 years. The arch, destroyed half a century ago, was the first monument … Read more
TRACING THE ROUTE TAKEN BY RICHARD II DURING HIS CAMPAIGN AGAINST ART MAC MURROUGH IN 1394 By Samuel Kinirons King Richard II (1377–99) was the first English monarch to set foot in Ireland since King John. Indeed, Richard visited Ireland twice, first in 1394–5 and again in 1399, shortly before the usurpation of his crown … Read more