The hidden side of Ireland’s built heritage is reflected in a series of new books. The architectural historian Robert O’Byrne, who runs the blog The Irish Aesthete, has compiled Buildings of Ireland, Lost and Found (Lilliput Press, €25.95). The author, turned photographer, has taken more than 100,000 images in the past 12 years and here curates a cross-section, dividing them into six segments, covering cottages to country houses and ancient monasteries to garden follies.
He delves inside with images of staircases, ceilings, tiles, chimneypieces and the only green organ in Ireland, found at St Fintan’s Church in Durrow, Co Laois, featuring angels carrying a family crest. His choice includes ruins of castles, mansions and the remains of a humble gate lodge.
O’Byrne has also edited A Vanishing World: The Irish Country House Photographs of Father Browne (Messenger Publications, €25.00). Black-and- white interiors of 20 houses and castles, including those at Lismore, Dromoland, Dunsany, and Malahide, are brought back to life through the remarkable photographic legacy of the Jesuit priest and amateur photographer Fr Francis Browne. Historical context and personal anecdotes by O’Byrne enrich the visual narrative of these houses which were taken at a time when the buildings were not open to the public.
[ Ireland’s beautiful ruined buildings and abandoned architectural grandeurOpens in new window ]
The cultural historian and writer Peter Harbison, who died in May 2023, produced an unrivalled legacy of scholarly books on Ireland but also left behind a posthumous publication, Medieval Mayo: Churches and Abbeys (Mayo County Council, €25). Archaeology and built heritage were a fascination and the book showcases a selection of the county’s religious stone monuments created during 1,000 years from AD 600 to 1600. Early medieval sites from 13 locations such as Caher Island, Inishglora and Mayo Abbey are discussed, before focusing on the late medieval, AD 1200-1500. This period, which includes two of the most important centuries in Ireland’s ecclesiastical history, covers the religious orders of the Cistercians, Augustinian Canons and friars, Dominicans, Carmelites, and Franciscans.
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A wider tour of the country and its built heritage is highlighted in For the Love of Ireland’s Buildings: Treasures from fifty years of the Roadstone Calendar (O’Brien Press, €29.99) by Michael Lunt. The calendar, which celebrated the best of the country’s architecture and engineering, hung in many homes. Browse the pages to discover atmospheric workers’ cottages, mansions, lighthouses, harbours and bridges. Pen portraits from the original Roadstone calendars by the architect Sean Rothery, writer Bernard Share and maritime historian John de Courcy Ireland, outline historical and environmental details.
The architectural embroidery of the materials that make these buildings does not always receive due attention, but Brickmaking in Ireland: A Gazetteer by Susan Roundtree (Wordwell €40), is filled with insight into brickfields which in the 19th century were found in every county. Most brick in Irish buildings was made locally and there is a rich social and industrial aspect associated with their production. This book may encourage readers to visit some of the areas discussed, such as the spectacular Gothic ruin Duckett’s Grove, near Carlow town. Despite its roofless state, the granite stone masonry is in excellent condition and is extensively lined with brick.
Several hundred photographs, many in colour, are interspersed throughout the text showing disparate facade styles such as polychromatic exterior, diaper patterning or terracotta detail; the endpapers comprise decorated bricks stamped with the names of the companies. The fabric of buildings and the bricks that made them is a fascinating story and it is fair to say that this superb study will be the standard textbook on the subject for many years to come.
[ Brick by brick – An Irishman’s Diary on the brickworks of IrelandOpens in new window ]
The enthusiasm for colourising books continues apace. Timeless Colours: Waterford (Merrion Press, €22.99) by Ian Hannigan, celebrates the history of the Déise with more than 100 images from 1840–1960. Through a combination of artificial intelligence technology and historical research, the author steps back in time bringing alive the past with a new energy.
Wide shots feature The Clock Tower, Broad Street, and The Mall, while numerous buildings such as the Granville Hotel, and a variety of shopfronts are reanimated. At The Home and Colonial Stores, shop assistants proudly stand outside their premises. A beautifully lit shot shows a sausage-making room at the Denny factory while another features workers baking the famed Waterford “blaa” at Adair’s Bakehouse. Other highlights include the Dromana Hindu-Gothic Gate near Villierstown – the best surviving example of this style of architecture in Ireland – which is afforded a freshly coloured and evocative new lease of life, and Robert French’s original photograph of The Square in Portlaw, the Quaker Model Village.
There are few better places for uncovering local history than churches and their surroundings, and Andrew Ziminski’s Church Going: A Stonemason’s Guide to the Churches of the British Isles (Profile, £25) brims with enthusiasm. The author, who is a conservator and restores gravestones, states that he has probably visited more churches than the Archbishop of Canterbury. The book is divided into three parts: In and Around the Churchyard, the Church Exterior, and the Church Interior. Sections on Gothic architecture cover gargoyles and grotesques, battlements and buttresses, parapets and pinnacles.
On one of his visits to Ireland on a frosty winter morning, Ziminski singles out the high cross at Monasterboice as being the most remarkable of all Irish crosses: “When the low sun introduced a dramatic contrast of light and shadow across the carvings, which reveal themselves in sparkling sequence as the sun’s rays pass from east to west.”
He has a passion for bullaun stones, the cylindrical hollows cut into boulders for devotional purposes, where the water in them is said to have curative qualities. There are, he states, a total of 837 bullaun stones throughout Ireland, while 360 Ogham stones survive in open country and churchyards. At the early monastic site of Kilmalkedar on the Dingle Peninsula, with its bullauns and holed Ogham standing stone, the author notes the unusual free-standing Mass dial cut from a single upright stone in the eighth century.
On a visit to Strandhill on Sligo Bay he is enthralled by the story of how St Patrick is believed to have lost a tooth at Killaspugbrone church. It has said to have been kept there for many years until a reliquary was made in the 12th century that allowed it to be carried around the countryside for public veneration. The reliquary is now in the National Museum in Dublin.
Another area of interest is in Sheela-na-gigs found in Ireland and Britain, and the author even uncovers a rare Séan-na-gig on the Hebridean island of Harris.
