Irish ruins
The Celtic Tiger has come and gone. Over the past 30 years, billions of pounds poured into Irish houses and then drained out again. The ruins of Ireland have slumbered on through the peak, the trough and the current blessed recovery. Medieval castles, Georgian country houses, Victorian lodges… They cling on, disappearing under the ivy, slowly crumbling, in demesnes across the island of Ireland.
As Robert O’Byrne, aka the Irish Aesthete, writes in his new guide Ruins of Ireland, we tend to think Ireland lost most of its great houses as a direct result of the Troubles of the early 1920s.