Dimensions
250 x 297 x 22mm
The Big House has haunted the Irish landscape and Irish imagination for nearly four hundred years. Large Irish country houses were built with a conscious pride in Irish craftsmanship and materials to rival those in England, and the natural beauty of the Irish landscape was noted and enhanced by the Anglo-Irish plantocracy whose woods and demesnes remain even when the big houses have themselves vanished.
This sumptuously illustrated anthology portrays the idiosyncratic life of the Big House in Ireland, portraying every aspect of the house and the lives of its inhabitants to create a documentary history full of splendour and tragedy. Each chapter looks at a different aspect, from the interiors and gardens to the famine and the troubles, and is illustrated with contemporary drawings, engravings, paintings and Thomas Pekenham's evocative photographs.
