Early machines

Cycling was a fringe pursuit for most of the period since the first crude form of bicycle, the Draisienne or dandy-horse or hobby-horse, appeared in Ireland in the summer of […]

‘As happy as seven kings’: Cycling in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

In November 1897 the editor of the Irish Wheelman, J.C. Percy, surveying recent developments in the cycling trade in Ireland, declared that ‘Cycling has now found its level, which happily […]

Corravahan House, Co. Cavan

Corravahan House, near Drung, Co. Cavan, is a mid-nineteenth-century glebe house of the middle size, constructed in the Italianate classical style. Thanks largely to lengthy occupation by the Leslie family, […]

Holy images from England: medieval English alabaster sculpture in Ireland

Within the Black Abbey in Kilkenny stand three figures carved as one from alabaster: it is an image of the Holy Trinity. Crowned, bearded and majestic, God the Father raises […]

The mystery of the broken doves

It does not take long to notice that the dove of the Holy Spirit on the Black Abbey Trinity has been damaged. Was it broken by accident, or was it […]