The picturesque ruins of country houses silhouetting the island of Ireland may seem romantic to us today, forgotten and forlorn in a characteristically Yeatsian aptitude. These ruins however are not gestures of poetry or painting but motifs of a militant past, built up over centuries and dismantled through famine, politics and rebellion. William Butler Yeats captured this turning point in Irish history throughout his poetry, Ireland was changing, the epoque of the Ascendancy was over and the cou

I’ve spent the past eight years driving around Ireland photographing the various buildings and interiors found across the island. From dilapidated banqueting halls in Norman towers to the state rooms of country houses, I found that the interiors of Ireland do not hold the same systematic regiment of those found across europe, instead they are enriched by haphazardness and individuality, adapted, added to and perfectly patinaed across centuries and owners. What remains today enriching the Irish l

After the Battle of the Boyne of 1690, a new Irish social world began to take shape and the great classical houses of the eighteenth century speak of a more settled time. The Anglo-Irish elite were confirmed in their estates, and a century of relative stability ensued. The great century of Irish Georgian architecture and craftsmanship had begun. Renaissance ideas of symmetry and classical details were arriving in a country where the ancient romans never reached, and gradually over time they soft