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Review: A History of Settlement in Ireland

This collection originated in celebrations of the first twenty years of the Group for the Study of Historic Irish Settlement. The Group's foundation in 1969 attested to and then intensified interest in the created landscapes of Ireland. It is ironical, as Dr PJ. Duffy notices in his contribution to the volume, that greater understanding and appreciation of these fragile physical worlds has coincided with their unparalleled destruction. 'Heritage', as idea and cause, has attracted the state, institutions and individuals, because marketable, profitable and maybe even vote-winning. The well-meaning annual competition to find the tidiest towns in Ireland has unwittingly done more to destroy the distinctive character of settlements than many earlier invasions. While a few sites receive loving attention and much cash, roads scythe through fragile terrains and ring-forts are bulldozed. Brash or bizarre dwellings, from pattern-book bungalows to suburban renderings of the Alhambra, line long roads and scar hillsides. Unlikely nomenclature for executive estates and exclusive parks will pose conundrums for place-name experts of the future. Similarly, theorists of urban development will have to concoct ingenious models to explain the agglomerations which make the approaches to so many places across and beyond Ireland look so similar. In general, the tone of Dr Barry's collection is positive. With good reason it stresses how much has been achieved in research and writing since 1969. Casualties have been the reputations of one or two who had pioneered scholarly investigation of the topography of Ireland. Esryn Evans, in particular, with his notion of an unchanging peasant society and distinctive settlement in clachans, is shown to have projected into a hazy past his own ideals and to have generalized unwisely from the evidence of the north-west. D.A. Binchy is a second giant prised from the pantheon. In their place, it isJ.H. Andrews who is substituted. His quizzical approach, rooted in meticulous consideration of literary, physical and especially cartographic evidence, has inspired some of the most exciting recent work. Professor Andrews is himself the author of a chapter in the book: a model of clear synthesis and exegesis. And, indeed, these last qualities characterise the volume as a whole. As well as established masters like John Andrews, W J. Smyth, Charles Doherty and the editor himself, younger scholars are included. The approach varies, with one or two shooting boldly from the hip. Most are more measured. Between them they survey the increased knowledge and changing interpretations from prehistory to the twentieth century. A few incorporate passages of their own research to suggest fresh directions. Professor Smyth, for example, ingeniously analyses evidence about church buildings in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to show the strength (or weakness) of the rival confessions in different parts of the island. Dr Kevin Whelan uses again his conceptual scaffold of an interlocking series of regional archetypes to make sense of the diversity of the eighteenth-century scene. Both Professor Smith and Dr Whelan, in common with