The feast before the famine

If you had the resources, Georgian Ireland must have been a very agreeable place in which to live. It was certainly more prosperous and peaceful than it would be after the 1848 famine. This idyllic world is captured in Patricia McCarthy’s scholarly and highly entertaining work, which stretches from the start of the building of Castletown House, Co. Kildare, in 1722, to the 1848 famine.

The chapters are arranged as though one were visiting an Irish country house: you approach the house in its landscaped setting; you are led through the hall; you are ushered into the dining room; you are shown the other public rooms, such as the saloon, drawing room and library; you are taken up to the family bedrooms and dressing rooms, and out to the stables; and finally, as you scrabble for your parting tip or ‘vail’, you make contact with the servants.

The 18th-century artist Mary Delany, who spent much of her life in Dublin, described the hall as a place where ‘music, dancing, shuttlecock, draughts, and prayers take their turn’.