A famed diplomatic residence overlooking Dublin’s Killiney Bay provides the backdrop for a wide historical canvas and narrative sweep through several centuries. Abbey Lea: A Killiney History (€65) by Pippa McIntosh recounts the life of a period house originally known as Marino, which in 1965 became the residence of the Australian ambassador to Ireland. The author is the wife of the current ambassador, Gary Gray, and the couple have lived there since the summer of 2020.
The first record of a house on the land dates from the early 1800s, and the reader is taken on a tour through the lives of owners. In 1909 the present stylish Arts and Crafts house was rebuilt by Laurence Ambrose Waldron, a stockbroker, patron of the arts, and nationalist MP who led a colourful life. His circle of friends who dined at the house included influential figures in the cultural, artistic and political world. The centrepiece of the book is the crucial role the house played in the development of the career of Harry Clarke with examples of his exquisite commissions from legend and literature. Waldron promoted Clarke’s work, which included designs that decorated not only his Killiney house but his office in Anglesea Street. This comprises stained-glass windows, lanterns, miniature panels as well as an ornate bookplate and family crest.
After Waldron’s death, Sir Robert Woods bought the house in 1924 and his family lived there for the next 25 years. A surgeon and MP for Dublin University, Woods was a collector of paintings and antique furniture. In 1950 the house was sold to Lady Joyce Talbot de Malahide who later renamed it Abbey Lea. The author has mined numerous archives including libraries, newspapers, private diaries and memoirs, old maps, family manuscripts and websites. She has intertwined history, architecture, literary culture, and personal stories to produce an elegant volume that will be an invaluable source for future historians.
With its rich vein of artistic, musical and literary history, Galway has long fascinated observers, and 200 years of its cultural past is celebrated in Hardiman & Beyond: The Arts & Culture of Galway since 1820 (Arden, €45) edited by John Cunningham and Ciaran McDonough. Spooling back in time, the historical panorama starts with the renowned antiquarian James Hardiman — the first librarian of the University of Galway Library — and his History of the Town and County of the Town of Galway, published in 1820.
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The book is segmented into 39 illuminating chapters weaving in literature, music, theatre, language, and dance, but also architectural landmarks and stories of festival Galway. One essay, by Anna Falkenau, captures the traditional music scene that enlivened the city from 1960-79. Buskers were lined along Shop Street while pub sessions from the early sixties made Galway the city with the highest traditional music content anywhere in Ireland. In 1963 a young American who had been busking around the country was passing through Galway and asked to play his guitar at the Fo’Castle Folk Club. His name was Paul Simon but some locals were unimpressed by his performance.
A distinctive contribution to the city’s history, the book’s wide parameters incorporate biographies of Nora Barnacle Joyce, Pádraic Ó Conaire, Máirtín Ó Direáin, Walter Macken, Patricia Burke Brogan and others. Visual treats include 200 etchings, photographs, prints and maps all contributing to a digressive and original study soaked in the poetry of a single place.
Another bicentennial is commemorated in Cultivating a Love for Knowledge: Two Hundred Years of the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society, 1821-2021 (£10) edited by Angelique Day and William Roulston, celebrating the organisation’s illustrious past. The BNH&PS was founded by Dr James Lawson Drummond and others passionate about scientific discovery. Drummond had the honour of having a sea cucumber named after him. In 1831 the society opened Ireland’s first purpose-built museum, funded by public subscription. A former chairman, the architect Marcus Patton, suggests that the building is a reminder of the beginnings of Belfast when its ambitions were directed to the arts and sciences rather than to commerce and religion.
The most outstanding museum acquisition from its early days was the mummy known as Takabuti, a noblewoman from Thebes (now Luxor) donated in 1834. In a fascinating essay the society’s vice-president, Winnifred Glover, explains the intense interest caused by the unwrapping of Takabuti during a society talk on Egyptian hieroglyphs when the mummy’s condition was explored in minutiae. Experts meticulously considered the anatomical state of the mummified body, a teacher sketched the wrapped figure, another member – in the linen trade – referred to the cloth enveloping her, while someone else expounded on the insects discovered in her unrolling. Others spoke of the aromatics and mode of embalming, the colours used in the case, and its workmanship.
Tomorrow With Bayonets, Dublin 11 July 1921-July 1922 (Mercier Press, €17.50) by Derek Molyneux and Darren Kelly covers a year-long period of the Civil War when the city was engulfed in explosions, murders, and urban warfare. Ten graphic chapters consider the Anglo-Irish treaty negotiations and the truce, the build-up and gathering storm, the battle of the Four Courts and battle for Dublin.
Through sensory description, the authors capture the atmosphere on July 11th, 1921, marking the cessation of the struggle between the insurgent Republicans and their British police and military enemies. They evoke the scorching heat, tram-lined streets, the sound of foghorns, whistles on the Liffey, church bells chiming, and a sense of relief, but also concern about whether the truce will hold. The battle for Dublin is described through its tragedy, drama, absurdity, and occasional hilarity when many people were plunged into a deep-seated and emotional maelstrom. Backed up with rigorously-researched facts and testimony, the circumstances are recounted with intensity making the book a page-turner.
Armagh: The Irish Revolution, 1912-23 (Four Courts Press, €24.95) by Donal Hall and Eoin Magennis embraces the period covering the decade of centenaries reflecting local experience that shaped the city and the county. During that time — stretching from the deepening crises of Home Rule to the Civil War — Armagh was one of the most controversial theatres of conflict. Although there was a rapidly changing military and political situation, the level of sectarian violence was not on the same scale as Belfast, but the threat of hostilities was never far away. Political uncertainty and tensions created confrontations between nationalists and republicans, as well as attacks on crown forces.
In June 1921, during the War of Independence, the Adavoyle ambush, close to the Louth border, was one of the deadliest Armagh IRA operations and was led by Frank Aiken. The target was a train carrying more than 100 soldiers with horses returning from the official opening of the new Northern Ireland parliament. Three soldiers in the 10th Hussars and a railway guard died in the derailment while up to 80 horses were killed. The scene was said to resemble a battlefield. In another incident, near Crossmaglen, a Sinn Féin convoy of cars with Éamon de Valera, Austin Stack and Seán McEntee was forced to stop by a large crowd from a rival meeting and was pelted with mud. One version of events states that de Valera needed medical treatment and the cars were severely damaged.
Through the prism of his family history, Ray Knowles, an English man who grew up in Birmingham, takes an expansive retrospective look at the lives of his Irish ancestors in A Seam of Emerald (£7.99) charting a period from the 1798 Rebellion onwards. He delves into Ireland’s tragic past, up to the early 1920s when his family engaged in the fight for independence, later moving to England. His grandfather, Jack Kiely, had been in the IRA and lived outside Borris in Co Carlow, where for more than 200 years they owned a small mill. Kiely, who became radicalised, told his grandson numerous stories of the history of cruelty, struggle and oppression.
However, he hid a secret that the author later discovered when piecing together his visits to the area. In February 1934, along with two others, his grandfather, on a whim, carried out an armed robbery on a bank in Taghmon in Wexford making off with less than £800. Newspapers reported that Kiely, who was jailed for seven years, had apologised for the inconvenience caused to the bank manager’s family. He had offered the manager’s wife 10 shillings for their children from the petty cash tin, but she refused saying she “would never touch stolen money”.
