As souvenirs, the greatest quantities of crest ware or Goss ware (after the main manufacturer, Adolphus Goss) bear the names and heraldic crests of major cities or well-known seaside resorts. The market developed with the advance of railways, and especially leisure time for workers, and the notion of holidays. Thus Irish crest ware is rarer … Read more
When Edward Carson accepted the role of Irish Unionist Parliamentary Party leader in 1910 he could not have predicted what the next decade had in store for him and his beloved Ireland. Bitter divisions and the emergence of rival paramilitary forces, open rebellion, the Great War and events that led to the creation of two … Read more
Number 84 Douglas Street is one of a pair of terraced houses in the South Parish of Cork, one of the city’s oldest suburbs. There are many historic buildings in the area, including Cork’s oldest standing structure, the fifteenth-century Red Abbey tower; the South Presentation Convent complex; eighteenth-century terraces along George’s Quay and White Street; … Read more
Huge population growth in British cities after the industrial revolution brought with it an increase in the number of public houses. By the turn of the twentieth century British newspapers were heaving with reports of the rise in alcohol-related crime, pauperism and insanity. In Ireland the social problems caused by drunkenness spurred proposed amendments to … Read more
During the eighteenth century and much of the nineteenth, England ruled Ireland through a class of landlords distinguished from their Catholic fellow countrymen not only by economic position but also by religion. As capitalist development threatened the first, they came to broaden the second by appealing to all Protestants regardless of their views, recruiting first … Read more