Our tale begins just after the Great Famine, when many landlords were desperate to get rid of their estates and there were people like John George Adair only too happy to buy this land cheaply. Adair wanted a hunting estate and so he bought 20,000 acres under the shadows of Muckish and Errigal mountains and … Read more
Abigail Francis Woods’ Relationship with Charles Stewart Parnell, Ireland’s “Uncrowned King” Over his seventeen year career (1874-1891), Charles Stewart Parnell achieved more influence than any Irish politician before him. He led the Irish Parliamentary Party, which sought Home Rule for Ireland, and he presided over the Irish National Land League, which battled landlords and their … Read more
A little-noticed map made 200 years ago provides the first detailed representation of the parkland around one of Ireland’s most elaborate ‘big houses’, the recently restored mansion at Ballyfin, Co. Laois. To be found in a volume of richly coloured estate maps now preserved in the Delany Archive in Carlow College, a map (below) depicting … Read more
What was the composition of the first supreme council elected in June 1642 prior to the first formal meeting of the Association of Confederate Catholics of Ireland the following October, a list that until now has remained elusive? The outbreak of rebellion in Ulster in October 1641 initiated a period of political turmoil that spread … Read more
Adomnán, the ninth abbot of Iona, is well known for his biography of St Columba. A lesser-known achievement was the promulgation in 697 of Cáin Adomnáin, the ‘Law of the Innocents’, Lex Innocentium. In the ninth-century Martyrology of Tallaght, Féilire Óengusso, the entry for 23 September reads: Do Adamnán Iae Asa tóidlech tóiden Ro ír … Read more