The Big House in Ireland

August 31:
National Heritage Week ended this past week on Sunday.  It was a week filled with rich experiences and celebrations of Irish culture, history, music and environment.   One trip this week locally was taken to the  restored Annaghmore Schoolhouse just 3 - 4 kms outside Collooney.   It was built and opened in the 1860's by the O'Hara family so that children of tenants on the O'Hara estate could attend school.   Annaghmore was the principal seat of the O'Haras in the later medieval period.  Unlike, the O' Rourkes,  O'Conors,  MacDonaghs, or the MacDermots,  the O'Haras of Annaghmore were the only family of Gaelic origin in Sligo to survive as landowners through the 17th century and subsequent penal days.  In 1820, a  big country house in Annaghmore was built to replace the original O'Hara house.   In 1860, CW O'Hara enlarged the house to the design of architect James Franklin Fuller. (See Archaeological Inventory of South Sligo, Vol 1).

On Sunday, while on my way to the old schoolhouse, through the trees I catch sign of this "big" house.  I cant help but ponder the demise of the old Gaelic families and resourcefulness of those who survived and held onto their lands.  What would the Sligo landscape look like if other families had survived?  This line of thought goes a long way in helping to explain how I feel about the big houses like  Cooperhill, Markree Castle, Templehouse, Lissadell, and the Rockingham Estate at Lough Key.

The immigrant stories from tenants of the Gore-Both's estate in Lissadell taken from ship records tell of the hardship and injustices suffered during the Famine years. It was interesting for me that while searching through the 1911 Irish census, I found that my father's family in Ballymote were tenants of the Gore-Booths.  Lands owned by the Gore Booths extended down past the Ballymote area.  My grandparents would have paid rent to the Gore Booth family for their meager home on 32 Goal Street - for land that once had belonged to the Gaelic families.

Life in the big houses of Ireland was sustained on the backs and brokenness of the people who had their land occupied and taken from them.  I cannot enter one of these houses on  a tour or visit without feeling the pain of history.