Mullingar lecture on ‘Burning the Big House’

A lecture to mark the concluding stages of the Decade of Centenaries series, which has been supported by Westmeath County Council and the Dept of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, takes place this Wednesday November 23 at 8pm in The Greville Arms Hotel.

The speaker is the acknowledged expert on the Big House in Ireland, Prof Terence Dooley from Maynooth University. He is the head of the Dept of History at Maynooth, and director of the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates.

His recent best-selling classic on the implications of the Civil War for the Big House, ‘Burning the Big House’, has been described as one of the most substantial contributions to the historiography of modern Ireland.

The book’s originality lies in the way it angles the history of the period to the experiences of the landed elite, without constituting merely a history of that elite. This theme is relevant to Westmeath, as Sonna House and Moydrum Castle were just two of the many Big Houses caught up in the Civil War conflagrations during 1922 and 1923.

Prof Dooley will be selling signing copies of the reprinted edition of his book after the lecture. This keenly-awaited lecture makes an important contribution to the Decade of Centenaries programme, and is particularly appropriate given the fraught memories associated with a difficult period of our history.

All are welcome to this event, which is hosted by Westmeath Archaeological and Historical Society, and refreshments will be served afterwards.