Charles O’Shaughnessy’s rebuttal of Darwin

professional and educated classes Charles O’Shaughnessy (1826/7–1911?) was a Kilfinane (Co. Limerick) draper with a taste for the polemical, as this stanza from one of his advertising jingles suggests. He […]

The Lord mayor’s state carriage, 1791

In eighteenth-century Ireland wealth and success were embodied in the carriage, and, unlike present-day totems of conspicuous consumption, these could be unique to the owner in style and pageantry. Like […]

Penal days in Clogher

In the aftermath of the Williamite revolution religious persecution intensified. In 1697 the Irish parliament, an exclusively Protestant assembly since 1691, enacted a law to banish all Catholic bishops and […]

The Viking slave trade: entrepreneurs or heathen slavers?

European and Irish society long before the Vikings arrived. St Patrick was first brought to Ireland as a captive, and slave-raiding across the Irish Sea is attested (in both directions) […]

Philanthropy, history and heritage

Philanthropy is not the prerogative of the wealthy alone. We must think long and hard about what philanthropy in this country could and should mean—creating a better place for one’s […]