The impact of the Great Famine on Sir William Palmer's estates in Mayo, 1840-69

Denis Brenan Bullen (1802-66) Inspector of Anatomy for the Province of Munster

The controversial career of a Cork surgeon

Michael Hanna

Denis Brenan Bullen was a controversial figure in the medical history of Cork in the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century. As a teenager in 1820 he played…

Peadar Cowan (1903-62)

Westmeath GAA administrator and political maverick

Tom Hunt

Imprisoned during the War of Independence, Peadar Cowan accepted the Anglo-Irish Treaty and served as an officer in the Irish army until 1931. While based in At…

Rural tensions in nineteenth-century Knock, County Mayo

Frank Mayes

In 1879 the parish of Knock witnessed both the outbreak of the ‘land war’ and also a reported apparition of the Virgin Mary. The press coverage that resulted fr…

The Dublin Cattle Market's decline, 1955-73

Declan O'Brien

The Dublin Cattle Market was an institution in the Irish livestock sector of the 1950s. Located between Prussia Street and the North Circular Road, the market s…

Michael Davitt

Freelance radical and frondeur

Laurence Marley

Michael Davitt (1846–1906) is popularly known as the founder of the Irish National Land League and as the architect of the Land War of 1879–82. However, the end…

Charles Trevelyan and the Great Irish Famine

Robin Haines

Charles Trevelyan, the assistant secretary to the Treasury during the Famine years, has received the bulk of the blame for the government’s parsimonious respons…

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 Rise and Fall of the Orange Order during the Famine Years

From reformation to Dolly's Brae

Daragh Curran

In the mid-nineteenth century, the Orange Order of Ireland fell into and emerged from apparent extinction into a vigorous resurrection - which was then stopped …