Crooke, Emer (2014) The Irish state and the Big House in independent Ireland, 1922–73. PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.

Preview

Download (2MB) | Preview

Abstract

The principal aim of this thesis is to examine the attitudes of the Irish state to the Big House after independence in 1922 until accession to the European Economic Community (E.E.C.) in 1973. State is used in this thesis to include governments, ministers, civil servants, politicians and state bodies. The term Big House will denote the country homes of landlords in Ireland, predominantly dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. ‘Big House’ will be capitalised throughout the thesis because it was the label, rather than the description, popularly used to denote country houses in Ireland. The terms Big House and country house are interchangeable and will be used throughout this thesis. Terence Dooley described how these were often imposing mansions ‘built to inspire awe in social equals and, indeed, deference in the lower social classes’. Furthermore, he pointed out that the term was also inflected with resentment as the houses were built on ‘what most tenant farmers would deem to have been confiscated land’, a claim dating back to the time of the English plantations in Ireland. Therefore, Dooley asserted that ‘above all, and particularly from the 1880s, they inspired hostility’.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Keywords:	Irish state; Big House; independent Ireland; 1922–73;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > History
Item ID:	10358
Depositing User:	IR eTheses
Date Deposited:	04 Jan 2019 12:19
URI:
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

Repository Staff Only(login required)

Item control page

Downloads

Origin of downloads