This book explores the everyday character and functions of domestic spaces in Georgian Ireland. While the design and decoration of the country pile and the aristocratic town house enjoys a long and distinguished literature, to date there has been no sustained examination of how rooms were habitually occupied and experienced, or how different social demographics – not least the burgeoning ‘middling sorts’ – might have informed approaches to spatial design and functionality. Drawing on recent pioneering research, the topics and themes addressed here range widely from comfort, privacy and multiple occupancy to sociability, maternity and piety. Focusing on how different species of domestic spaces were used and inhabited, from mansions and merchant houses to lodgings and farm house cabins, this book expands our understanding of house and home in Ireland in the long eighteenth century.

Conor Lucey is associate professor in architectural history in the School of Art History & Cultural Policy, UCD.

Introduction The dining room reconsidered The spaces and material culture of maternity in the eighteenth-century household Fashioning, fit-out and functionality in the aristocratic town house The merchant house in eighteenth-century Drogheda Domestic markets and uses for earthenware Piety, comfort and display in the Quaker home Arrangements of personal space in rural domestic households to 1830 Space, decoration and performance in a recently completed Gothic castle Domestic space in elite female correspondence Single lives, single houses