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The Decline of the Big House in Ireland
Terence Dooley

“This is an absorbing and in-depth social history in which the author Terence Dooley opens the doors on a declining way of life and discusses the reasons for its demise.”

Every county in Ireland is peppered with the traces of a way of life which has largely died out - forced into near extinction by political and economic changes as Ireland threw off her colonial past and moved towards modernity and Europeanisation.

Ruined mansions housing cattle and sheep, broken estate walls, grand entrances and overgrown drives leading only to a pile of brick and stone. The decline of the ‘big houses’ mirrored the changes in politics and society in Ireland and the UK during the 19th and 20th centuries.

A riveting social history documenting the ‘big houses’ in Ireland and those who lived in them, this book covers the period from 1850 (when these estates enjoyed an economic revival as the country began to recover from the Famine) to 1950 — by which time most had for decades been in decline or had been sold off.

Opening the window on lives as they were led in these large estates, historian Terence Dooley reclaims a part of Irish heritage which has tended to be overlooked. Extensive use of original memoirs and diaries brings the text alive, and newly compiled illustrations show selected houses in their various guises from proud family seat to crumbling pile.