Features

‘tales from the big House’ the Connacht District Lunatic Asylum in the late nineteenth century

Between 1810 and 1870, 22 district lunatic asylums were built in Ireland to accommodate an apparently growing population of mentally ill throughout the country, and only financial constraints, it would appear, checked the system’s further growth. What factors caused this startling expansion in accommodation for the insane in Ireland? Were the Irish, as some contemporary … Read more

A typical clergyman? Richard Plunkett and the Reformation in Tudor Meath

Sixteenth-century clergy in Ireland were, for the most part, singularly ill-equipped to preach and spread religious reform throughout the country, and Meath was not exempt from this general malaise. The clergy in the diocese of Meath lacked discipline and were not highly regarded, particularly by the Protestant authorities of the time. Hugh Brady, an Elizabethan … Read more