A front lawn fit to fight in: Contextualising Mary Rosse’s defence works at Birr Castle, Ireland (1846–48)

Atherton, Nathan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-2350-6360 (2025) A front lawn fit to fight in: Contextualising Mary Rosse’s defence works at Birr Castle, Ireland (1846–48). Landscape Research. pp. 1-15. ISSN 0142-6397

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Abstract

This paper examines a nineteenth-century designed landscape in the form of the bastioned ditch which surrounds Birr Castle, County Offaly, Ireland, and the role of contemporary politics and military experience in its design and execution. Using contemporary plans, letters, and newspapers, it analyses the designs against the backdrop of the political and social climate of Ireland in the 1830s and 1840s to demonstrate how the unrest of the period influenced designed landscapes, and reflected the motivations and anxieties of its creators. This is a fresh contribution to militarised designed landscapes in the British Isles, which have previously centred on earlier English examples. Unique both geographically and in date, Birr Castle widens the existing discourse on such designs.