BIG HOUSE TALK IN CAHANS

Cahans Meeting House will welcome Maynooth Professor of history, Terence Dooley, to speak about ‘the big houses’ in Irish history on Friday 11 April at 8pm. One of the Houses to be discussed will be Dartrey. To wet the appetite Professor Dooley says – “Like all great landed estates and aristocratic mansions, the decline of Dartrey was sped up by the great social and political changes from the Land War era of the late 1870s which began a long social and, indeed, political revolution. By the 1920s, aristocratic mansions such as Dartrey were simply no longer sustainable and were very often abandoned and demolished and their demesne landscapes swept away. In Dartrey’s case the estate was sold before the Great War, the house abandoned and its contents auctioned in the 1930s, and the house itself demolished in 1946. This lecture tells the story of what happened and considers what might have been”. There will be opportunity to speak to him about this and there will be the usual supper. Donations welcome.