Nick Maxwell By Damian Murphy Erasmus Smith (1611–91) was granted extensive lands under the Settlement of Ireland Act of 1652 as repayment for his support for the suppression of the 1641 Rebellion, and he proposed in December 1655 that some of the profits from those lands be used to endow ‘five school-houses for the teaching of grammar … Read more
By Michael Gibbons The recently published Coastal atlas of Ireland suggests that the Lisbon earthquake and subsequent tsunami on All Saints’ Day, 1 November 1755, caused significant changes to the shape and geomorphology of many south-western areas of the Irish coast, including at Rosscarbery, Owenahincha, Longstrand, Kinsale Harbour, Cape Clear Island and the neighbouring areas … Read more
By Martin Green In Finnegans Wake, the main ingredient in Shaun’s ‘stockpot dinner’ is a ‘round steak, very rare, Blong’s best from Portarlington’s Butchery’. The reference is to a butchery operated by a Blong family at the Huguenot settlement in Portarlington in the early 1700s; the Blongs were among the Huguenots (French Protestants) admitted to … Read more
By Gonzalo Franco-Ordovás On 16 March 1545, the Valladolid court of justice resolved a dispute between the inhabitants of the Castilian coastal village of Castro de Urdiales. The conflict had its origins in a disagreement over the granting of commissions to trade with the ruler of the Beara Peninsula in Ireland, Domhnall Ó Súilleabháin. Rather … Read more
By Meredith Cutrer The 7th of September 1170 marked a momentous occasion in Bergen, Norway: the relics of the Irish martyr-queen Sunniva were transferred from the island of Selja, off Norway’s western coast, to Bergen’s Cathedral of Christ Church. Sunniva’s cult played a consequential role in the ambitions of Norwegian kings and clerics and was … Read more