Nick Maxwell 
John George Adair (1823–85) gained notoriety as a cruel landlord because of the Derryveagh evictions carried out on his estate in County Donegal in April 1861. The eviction of 244 people, including many women and children, is regarded as one of the worst excesses of Irish landlordism. Announcing his death, the Derry Journal asserted that … Read more
The term ‘International Style’ was coined after the first International Exhibition of Modern Architecture (1932) in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The style emerged in continental Europe during the late 1920s and early 1930s, epitomised by box-like geometrical architecture unencumbered by ornamentation and usually finished in a gleaming white with large windows and … Read more
While Rutty dates the introduction of granite for construction work in Dublin to the early 1740s, evidence suggests that it was used at least 40 years earlier for some purposes. Clues to its earlier use lie in Rutty’s reference to the use of granite for paving and to its being ‘vulgarly called firestone’. Firestone remained … Read more
In 1772 John Rutty, in his ‘Essay towards a natural history of the county of Dublin . . .’, stated that granite ‘within these thirty years, is introduced and greatly used and esteemed in our buildings in the city of Dublin . . . insomuch as to have in some measure supplanted the use of … Read more
Earlier this year I wrote about Irish involvement in the First World War and how, although the numbers of Irish involved are still contested, official estimates currently stand at 210,000 mobilised and 49,300 dead. There is another war in which Irish soldiers fought and died in similar numbers but which is forgotten by official Ireland: … Read more