From Memoirs, a personal appearance on her balcony opposite White’s: ‘The next day, as I was sprinkling some flower pots, which stood on very broad leads, under the dining-room window, Colonel Duncombe, the Duke of Bolton, and the Earl of Winchilsea stood filling out wine, and drinking to me: So I took up the pen … Read more
There is an irresistible passage in Laetitia Pilkington’s 1748 Memoirs. It is her version of the dramatic moment when she was discovered by her husband, in the marital bedroom, with another man. The door was broken down (unnecessarily, since it wasn’t locked) and twelve witnesses piled in. ‘I own myself very indiscreet in permitting any … Read more
Ireland and Romania lie at opposite corners of Europe. An obvious link is that both countries have well-developed rural cultures and have only relatively recently escaped the embrace of adjacent domineering empires. Another is that for just over a century they have shared the sinister figure of Count Dracula. Dracula, the 1897 novel by Dublin-born … Read more
Built c. 1813 on a 57-acre site owned by Sir John Craven Carden (1757–1820), Richmond Barracks, when completed, was one of the largest in Ireland. Over the course of the nineteenth century it saw a large throughput of regiments, but by 1909 the barracks had been vacated. Templemore Town Council was informed by the War … Read more
The first Irish census was taken in 1821, and thereafter censuses were taken at ten-yearly intervals until 1911. The only census records to survive in their entirety are those for 1901 and 1911. The records for 1821–51 were lost in the destruction of the Public Record Office at the beginning of the Civil War in … Read more