The Big Houses and Landed Estates of Ireland

A research guide

Terence Dooley

Reprint

This book is designed to provide historians and all those interested in local history, specifically the history of landed estates and Irish big houses, with practical advice regarding the availability of primary sources, their locations, their strengths and their limitations. It significantly expands on the Sources for the history of landed estates in Ireland published by the same author in 2000 by also taking into account the vast array of sources that are available for the study of big houses, other than estate papers, such as auction catalogues, photographs, oral archives and architectural drawings. This book also provides a very broad outline of the history of landed estates and big houses in Ireland from the sixteenth to the end of the twentieth century.

Terence Dooley is coordinator of the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates at the History Department, NUI Maynooth. His major works include The decline of the big house in Ireland (2001); A future for Irish historic houses? (2003); ‘The land for the people’: the land question in independent Ireland (2004).