The Burning the Big House lecture series is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media as part of the Decade of Centenaries Programme. The free, online lectures will be presented on Thursday evenings (7pm to 8pm), from 24 March to 19 May and are open to all.
You need to register in advance and can make a donation to CSHIHE at the same time, if you so wish.
The first and last lectures will be delivered live, online. All the others will be pre-recorded and aired according to the following schedule:
24 MARCH: Burning the Big House: the story of the country house during the Irish Revolution, 1920-23, with Terence Dooley
31 MARCH: Revolution, agrarianism and the burning of Ballydugan House, Co Galway, 1922, with Ann O’Riordan
7 APRIL: ‘A barbarous mania of incendiarism’: house burnings in Co Louth, 1921-23, with Jean Young
14 APRIL: ‘A smouldering mass of charred stones’: The burning of country houses in Offaly, 1920-1923, with Ciarán Reilly
21 APRIL: Munster’s ‘Campaign of Fire’: Big House burnings in Counties Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford, 1922–23, with Gemma Clark
28 APRIL: ‘Ours must go in time’: the burning of Sir John Keane’s Cappoquin House, Co Waterford, with Glascott Symes
5 MAY: The ruined Irish country house: reality and perception, with Robert O'Byrne
12 MAY: ‘Such troubled times’: the burning of big houses in Northern Ireland 1921-1981, with Olwen Purdue
19 MAY: Ablaze! Fire and the country house: a perspective beyond Ireland, with Christopher Ridgway.
These talks will run in tandem with Burning the Big House: The Story of the Irish Country House in Revolution, 1920-23, an exhibition curated by Professor Terence Dooley. This will be hosted by the Irish Architectural Archives, 21 March–29 April, and by Maynooth University Library in May.
(Terence Dooley's 386-page book, 'Burning the Big House: The Story of the Irish Country House in a Time of War and Revolution', will be published by Yale University in March 2022.)