The Irish Georgian Society requests the pleasure of your company at Collier's Reserve Country Club, Naples.

About the Speaker

Professor Terence Dooley specializes in Irish social and political history of the nineteenth and twentieth centurties, particularly the history of Irish country houses.

He is the Director of the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates at Maynooth University. Terence's first major work, The Decline of the Big House in Ireland (2001), was described by Demond Fitzgerald, 29th Knight of Glin and President of the Irish Georgian Society, as "a brilliant and penetrating study of the reasons why the Republic of Ireland has so few surviving historic houses and collections".

In 2003, Terence was commissioned by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and the Irish Georgian Society to write a report on the issues facing historic houses in Ireland. The report, A Future For Irish Historic Houses? A Study of Fifty Houses (2003), highlighted the increasing risks faced by Irish historic houses in both private and public ownership. It emphasized that the preservation of all remaining historic houses, as well as their contents and their surroundings, was a national imperative. The report subsequently informed government policy and led to the establishment of the Irish Heritage Trust in 2006.

About the Talk

Using Carton House, Co. Kildare, the ancestral seat of the Earls of Kildare and Dukes of Leinster for over 700 years, as the focal point for his talk, Professor Dooley will discuss the rise of the Irish Country House, its inevitable decline and its rise again in the later part of the twentieth century.

About the Irish Georgian Society

The Irish Georgian Society promotes awareness and protection of Ireland's architectural heritage, gardens, and decorative arts. It achieves this through conservation projects that have saved many important historic buildings, through education programs that encompass seminars, publications and specialist tours, and through campaigning for the protection of endangered buildings.

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