George Wilkinson (1814–90) was the architect responsible for Irish workhouses. Born in Oxfordshire into a family of builder-architects, he was appointed by the Irish Poor Law commissioners to design and supervise an ambitious programme of workhouse construction. He arrived in Ireland, aged 24, in 1839/40. A report for the Poor Law commissioners in 1839 stated … Read more
Drawing on the revered heritage of the Irish Volunteers, the Fianna Fáil government created the Volunteer Force on 6 April 1934. This part-time militia was intended to appeal to the party’s republican supporters, and to offer them an alternative to membership of the IRA. Recruiting posters stressed the specifically Irish nature of the new force, … Read more
DD: How important was family background and schooling in the development of your historical interests? RBMcD: I was born in the middle of the middle classes, so from the very earliest days I was aware of how the business world thought and lived. I also grew up in the Protestant world of the North of … Read more
This topic suggested itself while I was studying Irish antiquarianism during the Enlightenment. I was investigating the Royal Irish Academy and the scholarly and political élite who were central to its establishment in 1785 as the national body for the promotion of ‘science, polite literature and antiquities’. I was looking at the scholarly activities of … Read more
In 1876 the Academy elected its second Irish honorary female member—the archaeologist Margaret Stokes, sister of the philologist Whitley Stokes MRIA. Stokes was the first woman honorary member to contribute papers to RIA meetings and subsequently to the Academy’s Transactions. She was not, however, the first woman to be published by the Academy—that honour fell … Read more