The first edition of the Atlas of the Irish rural landscape (1997) was immediately hailed as a classic. For its time it was a ground-breaking publication, featuring a previously unsurpassed array of maps, aerial photographs and detailed explanatory text combining broad overviews of Irish rural settlement with detailed treatments of individual regions. Perhaps unavoidably, the … Read more
Joseph and Bridget Moore may not be household names but they were real people, Irish immigrants who lived in 1869 at 97 Orchard Street, in New York’s Lower East Side. Now they and their family have been immortalised in the latest addition to the city’s Tenement Museum, located today at the same address. The recreated … Read more
‘Terrible queer creatures’: a history of homosexuality in Ireland Brian Lacey (Wordwell Books, €25) ISBN 9781905569236 With a title referencing James Joyce, this book takes one down a hundred avenues of Irish gay history and a greater number of characters. Whether their homosexuality is documented or the subject of reasoned speculation, Brian Lacey, a noted … Read more
Across a broad spectrum, from affronted ecclesiastic to paranoid loyalist, a considerable ‘rap-sheet’ mounted up against the AOH. The Ribbonmen (as they were also known) stood charged with sectarianism, violent suppression of political opponents, undue influence on the IPP machine and an ultimately separatist outlook. Nevertheless, behind this criticism lay the near-universal opinion that the … Read more
Bridget (Biddy) Early was born in 1798 in the townland of Lower Faha, Co. Clare, the only child of John Thomas Connors and Ellen Early, at a time of bloody revolution. Her family lived in poverty, with her mother making clothes spun from flax grown in the fields nearby. The threat of eviction was ever-present. … Read more