Strokestown and the Great Irish Famine

Ciarán Reilly

‘The most in-depth study of the effects of the Famine on a landed estate and its community … With the help of this book, we are brought deep inside the actuality of life during the Famine era. Some of our preconceived ideas of what actually transpired during that appalling era are challenged. Highlighted too is the important role played by the Irish National Famine Museum at Strokestown’, from the foreword by Mary McAleese, former President of Ireland.

The Strokestown Park House archive is one of the largest Irish estate collections in existence, with more than 50,000 documents comprising rentals, leases, accounts, correspondence, maps, drawings, architectural plans and photographs. Of particular importance are the papers that relate to the Great Irish Famine. This book aims to introduce the reader to the archive and to provide a fascinating and detailed insight into the many and varied experiences of the Famine for those who inhabited the estate in the 1840s.

Ciarán Reilly is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates at National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He is the author of The Irish Land Agent, 1830–60: the case of King’s County (2014) and John Plunket Joly and the Great Famine in King’s County (2012).