Thursday 29 August 2019

2019 release of Maynooth Studies in Local History series

Five titles have been published by Four Courts Press in the 2019 release of the well-reqarded Maynooth Studies in Local History series. Each of the 64-page booklets has been priced at €8.95, plus postage, and can be ordered direct from the publisher's website by clicking on the image below. Brief descriptions follow.

John Ferrall: Master of Sligo Workhouse, 1852–66, by Fergus O'Ferrall
This case study provides the first account to focus on the career and work of a master of an Irish workhouse. It explores the role of a master in respect of issues such as management, governance and the provision for the poor in post-Famine Ireland during the fourteen-year period when John Ferrall served as Master of Sligo Workhouse.
ISBN: 978-1-84682-803-4

Rathcoole and the United Irish Rebellions, 1798–1803, by Kerron Ó Luain
The story of the United Irish rebellions in a hitherto quiet corner of south-west County Dublin is a story of personal resentments fuelled by the spread of radical republican ideology, followed by a violent attempt at altering the social and political status quo. This book focuses on Rathcoole society between the years 1798 and 1803 and argues that, rather than agrarian or sectarian tensions, it was primarily United Irish politicization and organization that led to the outbreak of rebellion in the locality.
ISBN: 978-1-84682-804-1

Landholding in the new English settlement of Hacketstown, Co. Carlow, 1635–1875, by Oliver Whelan
The new Protestant settlement of Clonmore, centred around Hacketstown, proved resilient to the 1641 rebellion and attracted investment, including by Dublin bureaucrats and landed and military figures. Entrepreneurial Catholics turned to trade in response to the penal laws. Unusually, in the period 1852–74 most leaseholders, including Catholics, achieved security of tenure, subject to fixed rents.

Waterford port and harbour, c.1815–42: Shaping the port, by Mary Breen
The management and development of Waterford port and harbour during a formative period in Irish history are explored in this book. Particular attention is paid to the relationships and interactions between Waterford Corporation, the body granted control of the port and harbour under successive royal charters; Waterford Chamber of Commerce, the chartered body representing merchants and traders; and Waterford Harbour Commissioners, the statutory port authority established in 1816.
ISBN: 978-1-84682-800-3

The Kirwan murder case, 1852, by Suzanne Leeson
This book relates the story of the controversial trial, conviction and imprisonment of William Burke Kirwan, a Dublin artist, for the murder of his wife, Sarah, in 1852. His trial and the extensive and divisive social commentary it provoked provide a glimpse of the Irish Protestant middle class in the mid-nineteenth century, allowing an examination of many of the attitudes and values to which they subscribed.
ISBN: 978-1-84682-801-0