A County Wexford ascendancy house saved twice by rebel intervention in 1798 and 1922, Monksgrange tells a distinctive story of Irish history from the eighteenth to the twentieth 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 independent Irish state. An eminent historian of medieval Ireland lived there and a beautiful garden was created in the Arts and Crafts style. The furniture for Dublin’s Country Shop was made there, and a carp pool built by the Cistercians in the thirteenth 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 adjunct professor in history at La Torbe University, Melbourne, and an associate research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates at Maynooth University.