The remote, rugged, rough country of North West Ulster possesses buildings as varied as its landscape. Monuments of the Celtic church - sculptured cross-slabs, high crosses and round towers - and medieval tower houses survive from its earliest centuries. Fortified houses from the Plantation period are succeeded by Georgian mansions, and the richly varied urban and rural buildings of the Victorian period. In its churches both Protestant and Catholic, North West Ulster shows itself no less diverse.
The dynamic history of North West Ireland can be seen in the richness and variety of it surnames. Mitchell has attempted to compile concise but informative histories of those surnames which are most closely associated, through numerical strength or uniqueness, with North West Ireland.
Surveys the history of the province from the plantations of the early seventeenth century to partition and the formation of Northern Ireland in the early 1920s, and onwards to the 'Troubles' of recent decades. A major contribution to the history of Ireland and to Ulster's contested place in the British and the wider world.
Focusing on Irish speakers in Catholic West Belfast, this ethnography on Irish language and identity explores the complexities of changing, and contradictory, senses of Irishness and shifting practices of 'Irish culture' in the domains of language, music, dance and sports. The author’s theoretical approach to ethnicity and ethnic revivals presents an expanded explanatory framework for the social (re)production of ethnicity, theorizing the mutual interrelations between representations and cultural practices regarding their combined capacity to engender ethnic revivals. Relevant not only to readers with an interest in the intricacies of the Northern Irish situation, this book also appeals to a broader readership in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, history and political science concerned with the mechanisms behind ethnonational conflict and the politics of culture and identity in general.
It is widely accepted that no understanding of modern Irish history is complete without an awareness of the significance of events in the seventeenth century. This is true in particular of the Ulster Plantation. Sir Henry Docwra's military expedition, which arrived in Lough Foyle in May 1600, at the height of the Nine Years War, was instrumental in paving the way for James I's Plantation of Ulster that began only a few years later ... after Docwra, the English stayed. The decisive intervention of Docwra's small army brought to an end a conflict whose outcome was crucial in shaping the path of Irish history after 1600. It led also to Docwra bequeathing to us one of the most illuminating military journals in what was to become, even by Irish standards, a war-torn century. His 'Narration of the Services done by the Army Ymployed to Lough-Foyle vnder the leadinge of mee' is not only a fascinating description of Docwra's campaign in the north-west, it can also claim to be the best eyewitness account of a military campaign of the period. Docwra's 'Narration' was first edited and transcribed by the great Irish scholar, John O'Donovan, in 1849. This edition, edited by Billy Kelly, not only includes O'Donovan's comprehensive notes, including translations and descriptions of all the Irish place-names mentioned by Docwra, it also includes insights from more recent scholarship on the Nine Years War. An introduction, new maps, glossaries of terms, a bibliography, chronology and a full index all contribute to making this invaluable and previously scarcely-accessible text available for the general reader as well as being a 'must have' for the many interested in military history.
Ireland is a country rich in archaeological sites. Ireland: An Oxford Archaeological Guide provides the ultimate handbook to this fascinating heritage. Covering the entire island of Ireland, from Antrim to Wexford, Dublin to Sligo, the book contains over 250 plans and illustrations of Ireland's major archaeological treasures and covers sites dating from the time of the first settlers in prehistoric times right up to the seventeenth century. The book opens with a useful introduction to the history of Ireland, setting the archaeological material in its wider historical context, and then takes the reader on an unparalleled journey through the major sites and places of interest. Each chapter focuses on a particular geographical region and is introduced by a useful survey of the history and geography of the region in question. This is followed by detailed descriptions of the major archaeological sites within each region, arranged alphabetically and including travel directions, historical overview of the site, and details of the site's major features and the latest available archaeological evidence. As the most comprehensive and detailed compact guide to the archaeological sites of Ireland, this new volume will prove invaluable to archaeologists, students of Irish history, and tourists alike.
