About the Book
Within the walls of the demesne, the Anglo-Irish ascendancy constructed their vision of an Irish Utopia. Ideal landscapes were designed and planted out with standard temperate trees and newly introduced exotics from the Americas. Ideal cottages were built, paternalistic estate management structures developed, and complex planning and design theories indulged. Masques and plays, morally suspect in the strict Protestant ethos of the time, flourished within the enclosed world of the demesne. Robert Molesworth's radical Whig landscape influenced both Jonathan Swift and the Earl of Shaftesbury's political and aesthetic ideas. The women of Carton and Castletown employed the theatrical tradition of French gardens to explore controversial lifestyles. This book seeks to explore how and why the landscapes were designed, who designed them, who used them, and for what purpose. Detailed studies of selected and connected gardens were used to explore these questions, and the smaller compass is hopefully countered by a more detailed context.
Some of the gardens recreated retain much valuable evidence on the ground, while others have been pieced together from documentary sources, in particular the copious personal letters which survive. The existing gardens themselves are constantly in flux, as the source material grows and dies, or is more commonly axed by development. The disciplines of art history, architecture, engineering and planning are hauled informally together, to examine the role these disciplines have played, and should play, in creating and protecting the designed environment.
About the Author :
Finola O'Kane is a lecturer in architecture UCD and her previous work has been published in the journal Garden History
Review :
"As Finola O'Kane righly claims, Irish demesne landscapes near Dublin--Caron and Castletown--bear comparison with Het Loo, Hampton Court, Versailles, Potsdam and Monticello. Yet they have been despised, abandoned and ignored. Today they are subject to fragmentation and destruction from an expanding capital. Beautifully composed, and drawing equally on critical landscape theory and the widest range of written and graphic sources, Landscape Design in Eighteenth-century Ireland thoughtfully celebrates the women and men of the Whig ascendancy who shaped and used their demesne lands as spaces of polite transgression in a fraught moral and political world, and in doing so produced one of the gems of Irish heritage."--Denis Cosgrove
"Astute ransacking of archives--instructions from distant proprietors, family correspondence, estate plans and workbooks--allows Finola O'Kane to open windows upon three exemplary Irish landscapes--Breckdenston, Castletown House and Frescati. In the process, the Irishness of estate developments is explored--the subtle or more aggressive manipulation of English trends, the studied internationalism of sources and resources for both landscape design and agrarian efficiency (the Netherlands, most obviously, but also America and revolutionary France). But the focus also comes to include, not just estate management and landscape aesthetics, but the role of women as designers, planters and stewards of property, the education of children in country matters, Irish tourism, country house entertainment, and how all these elements were marshaled in the interests of Irish identity and political status."--John Dixon Hunt
"Landscape Design in Eighteenth-Century Ireland: Mixing Foreign Trees with the Natives is a fascinating, in-depth study of the eighteenth-century landscapes around Dublin and the gardens of the region, as well as the political, monetary, and aesthetic appreciation influences that led their owners to create them. Chapters focus especially upon Robert Molesworths's landscape of Breckdenston, the landscape of Castle Town House, Carton Demesne's work which introduced foreign trees, and the school at Frescati. Part envionmental history, part narrative of the lives and decisions of wealthy individuals, part studious assessment of the ambitious large-scale projects that changed the nature of the countryside, Landscape Design in Eighteenth-Century Ireland is absorbing and detailed scrutiny. Illustrated throughout with black-and-white as well as color images, paintings, diagrams and photographs, Landscape Design in Eighteenth-Century Ireland is virtually unique in its theme of discussion yet delves into its subject matter with such depth as to eclipse rival attempts."
"Astute ransacking of archives - instructions from distant proprietors, family correspondence, estate plans and workbooks - allows Finola O'Kane to open windows upon three exemplary Irish landscapes - Breckdenston, Castletown House and Frescati. In the process, the Irishness of estate developments is explored - the subtle or more aggressive manipulation of English trends, the studied internationalism of sources and resources for both landscape design and agrarian efficiency (the Netherlands, most obviously, but also America and revolutionary France). But the focus also comes to include, not just estate management and landscape aesthetics, but the role of women as designers, planters and stewards of property, the education of children in country matters, Irish tourism, country house entertainment, and how all these elements were marshaled in the interests of Irish identity and political status." -- John Dixon Hunt, University of Pennsylvania
