Exploring the history and heritage of Irish landscapes

Patrick J. Duffy

This book highlights the principal themes and elements in the making of the landscape, and the sources which can assist historians and historical geographers in studying and understanding Irish landscape history. Major and local sources relating to the natural environment, cultural landscapes and the built environment are explored. The book also looks at representations of landscapes in literature, painting and other artistic sources which can provide insights into the nature of real and imagined worlds of the past. The ultimate source which features prominently throughout this study is the landscape itself on which generations before us have inscribed the marks of their presence in fields, farms, houses, villages, towns, roads, lanes and the infrastructure of settlement.

Patrick Duffy is Associate Professor of Geography, NUI Maynooth, where he lectures in cultural and historical geography. He is author of Landscapes of south Ulster: a parish atlas of the diocese of Clogher (1993), editor of To and from Ireland: planned migration schemes c.1600–c2000 (2004) and co-editor of Gaelic Ireland c.1250–c1650: land, lordship and settlement (2004).