Gothic

Building Castles in post-Union Ireland

Judith Hill

Castles speak. Especially in an age when they are no longer necessary. The act of union of 1800, which brought Ireland into closer association with Britain, challenged the status of Irish landed proprietors, and not a few responded by building castles. In Gothic: Building castles in post-Union Ireland Judith Hill explores the projects of two Irish proprietors: the Burys, later Lord and Lady Charleville who commissioned Francis Johnston, then Ireland’s most important architect, to design Charleville Castle; and Lawrence Parsons, later 2nd earl of Rosse, who re-imagined seventeenth-century Parsonstown House as early nineteenth-century Birr Castle.

Architecturally the castles belong to Georgian Gothic, a style that in Britain is overshadowed by later nineteenth-century Gothic and is largely overlooked in Ireland. In this fascinating new book Judith Hill investigates Georgian Gothic in its own terms as both a British and Irish phenomenon, demonstrating how antiquarian understanding, associative thinking, awareness of family pedigree and historisised design ideas resulted in a uniquely Irish response to the Gothic revival.

Using the ample surviving archives related to both families, she argues that these architecturally original and significant castles eloquently expressed their builders’ political and social concerns, making them artefacts of cultural unionism. 

Judith Hill is an architectural historian and writer. Among her books are Lady Gregory: An Irish Life (2005), Irish Public Sculpture (1998) and The Building of Limerick (1991).