Few country houses have survived 250 years and provided shelter for ten generations of the same family, but that is the story at Monksgrange on the Wexford slopes of the magnificent Blackstairs, where the sun shone brightly today and the celebrations were in full swing.

It was a case of ‘full house’ for the Monksgrange 250 Symposium which brought the leading academics to tell the story of the house, its place in society, and its influential impact on events in many European countries, and London. Of particular interest were the Orpen photographs and the family contribution to the exceptional archive that has evolved and is being processed to make it more public friendly through modern communications.

Today’s highglight was the official launch of Philip Bull’s 269-page tome entitled MONKSGRANGE; Portrait of an Irish house and family, 1769-1969, which was discussed and analysed at length and launched by Prof. Roy Foster.

Waterford-born Prof. Foster is an Irish historian and academic and was Carroll Professor of Irish History at Hertford College, Oxford, from 1991 until 2016. He is generally published under the name R.F. Foster and has written early biographies of Charles Stewart Parnell and Lord Randolph Churchill, and also amongst his works is a two-part biography of W.B. Yeats.

Philip Bull’s excellent work tells the story of a County Wexford ascendancy house saved twice by rebel intervention in 1798 and 1922, Monksgrange tells a distinctive story of Irish history from the 18th to the 20th centuries. Its people were not ordinary.

One landlord had fought slavery in the American Civil War, another was a novelist, and another an agricultural reformer and Senator in the new independent Irish State. An eminent historian of medieval Ireland lived here, and a beautiful garden was created in the Arts and Crafts style. The furniture for Dublin’s Country Shop was made here, and a carp pool built by the Cistercians in the 13th century attests to the property’s much earlier history.

This book illuminates important aspects of Irish history and chronicles how this talented family experienced and survived the many vicissitudes of Irish life over two centuries. A postscript shows how the house continues to play a positive role in contemporary Irish life.Philip Bull is the author of Land, politics and nationalism: a study of the Irish land question (Dublin, 1996). He is adjunct professor in history at La Trobe University, Melbourne, and an associate research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates at Maynooth University.
MONKSGRANGE Portrait of an Irish house and family, 1769-1969, by Philip Bull, 288pp colour ills, Hbk ISBN 978 1-84682-786-0, published by FOUR COURTS LTD, Dublin, price €50/ £45 / $70.

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