Series: Maynooth Studies in Local History

The Kirwan murder case, 1852

A glimpse of the Irish Protestant middle class in the mid-nineteenth century

Suzanne Leeson

This book relates the story of the controversial trial, conviction and imprisonment of William Burke Kirwan, a Dublin artist, for the murder of his wife, Sarah,…

Tristernagh Priory, Co. Westmeath

Colonial monasticism in medieval Ireland

Tadhg O’Keeffe

Little remains of the Augustinian priory of Tristernagh, Co. Westmeath, founded by Geoffrey de Costentin around the year 1200 and dedicated to the Blessed Virgi…

The Parnell split in Westmeath

The bishop and the newspaper editor

Michael Nolan

This book tells the story of the Parnell split in Westmeath and argues that it was part of a wider revolt by a section of the Catholic middle class against the …

Thomas Bermingham

Nineteenth-century Irish land agent and ‘Improver’

Cathal Smith

This study investigates the career of Thomas Bermingham, a professional land agent who was widely known in his day for his management of the Clonbrock estates i…

Fleeing from famine in Connemara

James Hack Tuke and his assisted emigration scheme in the 1880s

Gerard Moran

Between 1882 and 1884, the English Quaker and philanthropist James Hack Tuke assisted nearly 5,000 people, mainly families, to emigrate from Connemara – paying …

The Walker Testimonial and symbolic conflict in Derry

Heather Stanfiel

How did one 19th-century memorial to a 17th-century figure come to be so significant in the city of Derry that it would generate conflict for nearly 200 years? …

The Great Famine in Kinsale

Catherine Flanagan

This book examines the effects of the Great Famine on the people of Kinsale and surrounding countryside. It shows how famine, death and disease took their toll …

Culture, politics and local government in Fingal, 1891–1914

Declan Brady

The period from the death of Parnell to the Home Rule crisis is popularly thought to be somewhat stagnant posited between more momentous events. The fracturing …

Kerry, 1600–1730

The emergence of a British Atlantic county

Marc Caball

Kerry’s coastal location within the north-western corner of the north Atlantic positioned it strategically within a wider sphere of unparalleled discovery, migr…

Castle Hyde

The changing fortunes of an Irish country house

Terence Dooley

Castle Hyde is one of the most important surviving country houses in the south of Ireland. This book details its rise as a country residence during the heyday o…

The Shawlies

Cork's women street traders and the 'merchant city', 1901–50

Susan Marie Martin

For centuries, working-class Irish women survived as street traders, selling fruit, vegetables and second-hand clothing. In Cork they were known as ‘the Shawlie…

The tenement dwellers of Church Street, Dublin, 1911

Janet Moody

This publication aims to re-constitute a micro-community of 132 families living in Church Street in the heart of the worst slums in Dublin, using the 1911 censu…