In the 1700s Irish emigrants to America were remarkably diverse, especially in comparison with the apparent homogeneity of the Famine and post-Famine migrants. Although a majority were Presbyterians from Ulster, a third or more were Anglicans (members of the established Church of Ireland), Quakers, Methodists and other Protestant dissenters, as well as Catholics, from all … Read more
Bray Town Hall, built in Tudor Revival style at the top of Main Street, was commissioned by the eleventh earl of Meath’s son and heir, Reginald Brabazon, Lord Ardee, who had lived abroad and who seems to have been anxious to show interest in the town where his father was lord of the manor and … Read more
Músaem Chorca Dhuibhne Baile an Fheirtéaraigh, Co. Chiarraí (Ballyferriter, Co. Kerry) +353 (0)66 9156333/9156100 www.cfcd.ie 10am–6pm daily, April–September by Tony Canavan The regional museum for the Corca Dhuibhne Gaeltacht is in the old schoolhouse, built in 1875, in Baile an Fheirtéaraigh. It was opened in 1985 and has been going from strength to strength ever … Read more
In 1914 approximately 57,000 Irishmen were serving in the British Army and its reserves. It is now generally accepted that over the following four years of the Great War another 144,000 enlisted, giving a total figure of approximately 200,000. Why did they enlist? Motivation varied from the personal—restlessness, a thirst for adventure or a wish … Read more
An eighteenth-century Whig dressed in ill-fitting nineteenth-century Tory clothing? Seán Patrick Donlan assesses the hotly contested legacy of Edmund Burke For two centuries the legacy of Edmund Burke has been hotly contested and arguably distorted by apologists and opponents alike. In his day, the London press caricatured him as a whiskey-toting Jesuit, managing to combine … Read more