|
Showing 1 - 3 of
3 matches in All Departments
Billy Colfer's Wexford Castles expands the IRISH LANDSCAPES series
by taking a thematic approach, while still staying loyal to the
central landscape focus. Rather than adapting a narrowly
architectural approach, he situates these buildings in a superbly
reconstructed historical, social, and cultural milieu. County
Wexford has three strikingly different regions - the Anglo-Norman
south, the hybridised middle and the Gaelic north - which render it
a remarkable version in parvo of the wider island. Colfer's
wide-angle lens takes in so much than the castles themselves, as he
ranges widely and deeply in reading these striking buildings as
texts, revealing the cultural assumptions and historical
circumstances which shaped them. In this most cosmopolitan of
counties, we range far and wide in search of the wide-spreading
roots of its cultural landscape - from the Crusades and the Mani
peninsula in Greece to the Bristol Channel, from Crac des
Chevaliers to Westminster, from the Viking north and the cold
Atlantic to the warm Mediterranean south. The book breaks new
ground in exploring the long-run cultural shadow cast by the
Anglo-Normans and their castles, as this appears in the Gothic
Revival, in the poetry of Yeats and in the surprisingly profuse
crop of Wexford historians and writers. While most books on a
single architectural form can end up visually monotonous,
creativity has been lavished on this volume in terms of keeping the
images varied, fresh and constantly appealing. The result is a
sympathetic and innovative treatment of the castles, understood not
just as a mere architectural form, but as keys to unlocking the
mentalite of those who lived in them. Wexford Castles: landscape,
context and settlement is a worthy conclusion of Billy's Colfer's
superb trilogy of landscape studies.
The Hook Peninsula succeeds Newgrange and the bend of the Boyne in
the Irish Rural Landscapes series, an offshoot of the
internationally successful Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape. This
case-study explores the rich landscape of the compact and highly
distinctive Hook peninsula in south-west county Wexford and places
its layered archaeological legacy in an historical context. In the
medieval period, the region experienced the initial Anglo-Norman
landings in Ireland and was subsequently divided into three major
ecclesiastical estates. The introduction of the Cistercians and the
Knights Templars on to these estates brought mainstream medieval
European practice to the Hook and determined the future development
of community and landscape. Following the dissolution of the
monasteries in the sixteenth century, the new lay owners of the
estates continued to develop natural and economic resources,
establishing the basis for modern settlement and landscape
organisation. The Hook forms the eastern boundary of Waterford
Harbour, the gateway to south-east Ireland. Because of its
strategic nature, the harbour has played a central role in Irish
history and this is reflected in the physical remains around its
shores. This book connects these remains in the Hook peninsula with
the historical record and places the local story into a wider
narrative. The origins of present-day families are also discussed.
By using a wide range of maps, colour photographs (many of them
aerial) prints and illustrations, the gradual evolution of the
cultural landscape from earliest times to the present day is
traced. The need for modern developments to appreciate and respect
the inherited environment, and to conserve it for future
generations, is also examined.
|
You may like...
Poldark: Series 1-2
Aidan Turner, Eleanor Tomlinson, …
Blu-ray disc
(1)
R55
Discovery Miles 550
Hampstead
Diane Keaton, Brendan Gleeson, …
DVD
R66
Discovery Miles 660
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
|