Nick Maxwell Fota House would have been a very different place but for the exertions of John Smith-Barry (1793–1837) of Marbury Hall, Cheshire. Having decided in the early nineteenth century to make Fota his permanent Irish home, in about 1825 Smith-Barry commissioned (Sir) Richard Morrison (1767–1849) and his son, William Vitruvius Morrison (1794–1838), to extend an existing … Read more
If anyone in Ireland is asked which side the country favoured in World War II, ‘The Allies, of course!’ will be the almost invariable reply. Ireland, after all, was Britain’s nearest neighbour. Tens of thousands served in the British armed forces; an even larger number earned their living in Britain’s war industries. The Irish government … Read more
Flora Sandes (1876–1956) fought with the Serbian army during the Great War, and was awarded the country’s highest military honour. To the soldiers of Serbia she was nashi Engleskinja—‘our Englishwoman’. Flora was indeed born in Poppleton, Yorkshire, but her family background was whollyIrish. How had she ended up fighting in the Serbian Army? Escape from … Read more
When Charles Stewart Parnell’s coffin was drawn through the streets of Dublin on Sunday 11 October 1891, the carriages immediately following the hearse were occupied, appropriately, by members of his family. Four carriages back, however, was one carrying a number of prominent Fenians, most notably John O’Leary and James Stephens. Accompanying the two legendary IRB … Read more
In 1879 Sir John Joscelyn Coghill of Drumcondra visited the Museum of Science and Art in Dublin (now the National Museum of Ireland) to donate a number of ethnographic items gathered by his eldest son, Lieutenant Nevill Coghill. The collection was made up of tribal military equipment from Southern Africa, captured by Nevill the previous … Read more