Achill Island History there is evidence that Achill was inhabited as many as 5,000 years ago. Co. Kildare Online Electronic History Journal An Electronic Journal for the publication of material relating to the history, archaeology and heritage of Co. Kildare. History and Family Research Centre (Local Studies, Genealogy and Archives) part of Kildare County Library [...]

Hand of History – Burden of Pseudo-History This book presents a Celtic Royal complex, unprecedented in Ireland for its size and layout, but similar to Belgic Centres of Power, called oppida by Caesar, in SE England and on the Continent. It was centered on Turoe in Co. Galway, site of the famous Turoe Stone. No [...]

Foundations of Irish CultureA great deal that has been written about Irish culture in the period ad 600-850 has been touched by the Romantic views of the 19th century, which saw Ireland as a lone beacon of knowledge shining out during Europe’s ‘Dark Ages’. That view has been most recently expounded in the book by [...]

Irish Hammered Coinage c.995-1660 The first locally produced Irish coinage was the so-called Hiberno-Norse coinage which was first minted in Dublin in about 995 AD under the authority of Sithric III (aka Sithric Silkbeard), the Norse king of Dublin. Irish Coinage Tales of Medieval Dublin a lunchtime lecture series exploring the lives of seven different [...]

The Irish Chancery Rolls ProjectThe Irish Chancery Project is an IRCHSS-funded thematic project that seeks to advance our understanding of the ‘making of Ireland‘ between the high Middle Ages and the dawn of the modern era – one of the most formative periods in Ireland’s past – by publishing on the web and in print [...]

Calendar of The State Papers Relating to Ireland in the Reign of Elizabeth, 1 November, 1600– 31 July, 1601 The papers calendared in this volume continue the story of Mountjoy’s government for the nine months between 1 November, 1600, and 31 July, 1601. A few weeks after the latter date, the long-expected Spaniards arrived at [...]

The Williamite Penal Laws Eighty percent of the population of Ireland, owning one third of the land, were Roman Catholics. All suffered from the Penal laws of 1697-1727. From the reign of Elizabeth I when the Church of England became the Established Church, there had been attempts made to eradicate Catholicism from the British Isles. [...]

Britain and Ireland, 1789-1801 The Irish could see that religious inequality had been abolished in France and that a democratic government had been set up. Irish Roman Catholics wanted equality; Irish Protestants wanted parliamentary reform. Both groups wanted economic reform.– The Victorian Web, Dr Bloy The Origins of the Orange Order The Orange Institution, more [...]

Ireland: politics and administration, 1815–1870 * 1. The Act of Union * 2. Daniel O’Connell and emancipation * 3. Electoral reform * 4. The Orange Order and sectarian politics * 6. The Poor Law * 8. Young Ireland * 9. Government responses to the Famine * 10. Fenianism * 11. Liberal reforms. – Christine Kinealy [...]

Emancipation, Famine & Religion: Ireland under the Union, 1815–1870 Ireland: society and economy, 1815–1870. * 1. Ireland in 1815 * 2. Agriculture & living standards * 3. Agricultural crisis and industrial decline * 4. The collapse of the wool and cotton industries * 5. Pre-famine crisis? * 7. The Great Famine * 8. Did the [...]

Home Rule: Ireland: politics & administration, 1870-1914 * 1. Origins of Home Rule * 2. Home Government Association * 3. Home Rule League * 4. Obstructionism * 5. Parnellism as Politics * 6. Parnell’s Fall * 7. The Maturing of Irish Unionism * 9. More Assertive Nationalism, 1870–1914 * 10. Protestantism & Irishness * 11. [...]

Irish Famine 1879 The Irish famine of 1879 was the last main Irish famine. Unlike the earlier Great Famines of 1740-1741 and 1845-1849 the 1879 famine (sometimes called the “mini-famine” or An Gorta Beag) caused hunger rather than mass deaths, due to changes in the technology of food production, different structures of land-holding (the disappearance [...]

James Larkin James Larkin, the son of Irish parents, was born in Liverpool on 21st January 1876. When he was five years old he was sent to live with his grandparents in Newry in Ireland.Larkin returned to England in 1885 and found employment as a dock labourer. Converted to socialism, Larkin joined the Independent Labour [...]

Revenue History 1923-1988 February 21st 1923, six months after his death, the wish expressed in Michael Collins’s last known letter materialised. On that date his objective of an organised body to collect the State’s revenues got final approval when Government Order 2/23 became law. Revenue. Irish Tax and Customs The Changing Distribution of Protestants in [...]