Was this simply a case of a tourist snapping up collectables with a celebrity appeal, or does the episode reveal a deeper sympathy for the Jacobite cause? By Estelle Gittins The Library of Trinity College, Dublin, holds two fascinating and little-known manuscripts bought by a nineteenth-century Irish tourist in Rome—a volume of the private devotions … Read more
By Fiona Fitzsimons In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries some Huguenots fled the religious wars in France and settled in England and Ireland. As a group they had diverse social origins, and they assimilated into Irish society at every level, not only as artisans and businessmen. They were military pensioners, linen- and silk-weavers, silver- and … Read more
Images of the Irish in a revolutionary painting. By Royston Spears Between 1815 and 1845 perhaps half a million men and women left Ireland to escape economic hardship and famine, and crossed to Britain in search of work. There many of them began new lives as navvies, farm labourers and street traders. For much of … Read more
Rathdowney, Co. Laois www.donaghmoremuseum.ie By Tony Canavan Situated between the M7 and M8, near the town of Rathdowney, the Donaghmore Workhouse and Agricultural Museum is worth leaving the motorway for if you want to break your journey. This complex of buildings has survived almost intact since the mid-nineteenth century despite undergoing a number of changes … Read more
The impact of print may have been more muffled than initially supposed. By Toby Barnard Between 1550 and 1800 almost 30,000 different publications were printed in Ireland. This development, accelerating from the 1720s, has been seen as the motor driving enlightenment, secularisation, rationalism, nationalism, material and mental betterment, ‘modernity’, political engagement, restlessness and ultimately, in … Read more