The surging and resurgent research about the First World War in Ireland tends to focus on big ideas like the political machinations of the war's outbreak, the formation and deployment of the Irish volunteer forces, divisional or regimental histories, and macro-level examinations of the war's aftermath in Irish society. This much-needed research reveals the infrastructure of Ireland's great war effort but establishing these table stakes has left precious little ink for more specific ideas and topics. Social class is one such lacuna and this is one area where The country house and the Great War makes a useful contribution to the ongoing reclamation of Ireland's great war history.
The collection contains sixteen chapters, nine that focus on Ireland while the other seven examine families and estates across the United Kingdom. Source material for these chapters draws heavily from private collections held by the estates under examination, bringing to light the wartime histories of many of these families for the first time. This presents a nuanced look at the impact of the war on the upper classes.
In the case of Ireland, these chapters reveal how the war and wartime losses affected, and oftentimes accelerated the decline of Anglo-Irish ascendency families. Whether it was a single death, like that of King Elmes, as discussed by Ida Milne, or multiple deaths within a single family, like those highlighted by Fidelma Bryne, the war inflicted a wide range of trauma on landed families. Some families dealt with the psychological trauma of these losses internally. Others, like the Actons, examined by Byrne, went into bankruptcy because of multiple death duties. Likewise, Robert Heard, the focus of Fergal Browne's chapter was the sole heir to his family estates and his death from the flu in 1919 (after surviving the war) effectively ended his family's 300-year connection to Kinsale. Ian d'Alton's chapter on Norman Leslie, who died in October 1914, highlights the social and cultural role of landed families in Ireland at the time. Norman Leslie planned to pursue a career in politics – British politics. Here, d'Alton suggests that the death of Irish Protestant elites in the war delivered a crippling blow to that class's political viability in the post-war era.
The fate of those Irish individuals and families in Ireland that survived the war form another cohort in the collection. Ciaran Reilly's chapter about the Tyrrells, a unionist family in County Kildare, reveals that locals targeted them during the Anglo–Irish War and the family suspected their son Willie's war service contributed to this targeting. This, however, was not a universal sentiment in Ireland. Donal Hall's chapter on the Bellingham family in County Louth illustrates how a good rapport with the local community ensured the family's survival: the estate avoided material destruction during the 1919–23 period. The Bellinghams supported the Irish National Volunteers, the Gaelic League, and the G.A.A. before the war, recruiting efforts and the Red Cross during the war, and ex-servicemen's organizations and the construction of a local war memorial after the war. The military career of Edward Richards-Orpen, discussed by Philip Bull, shows a different side of war service as Orpen worked behind the front lines doing vehicle maintenance. Orpen survived the war and eventually served in Seanad Éireann as an independent. David Murphy studies the relationship between T. E. Laurence and Pierce Joyce (County Galway), who served together as officers in the Middle-East, while Colm McQuinn examines the different military careers of the Hely-Hutchinson brothers.
The chapters examining estates in Great Britain juxtapose the Irish war experience in interesting ways. Edward Bujak looks at the connection between the landed elite and military air power. Caroline Carr-Whiteworth and Dawn Webster each contribute chapters that illustrate the many and diverse ways in which landed families contributed to the war effort. Ronan Foley uses Mount Stuart in Scotland to examine the country house as hospital. Paul Holden studies at Lanhydrock in Cornwall as an example of how the war accelerated the slow decline of a rural parish. Christopher Hunwick focuses on the Percy family in Alnwick, highlighting the difficulty of tracing the war experiences and contributions of estate workers compared to estate owners due to a lack of records. Brett Irwin's chapter on Lady Londonderry explores the varied ways in which elite women aided with the war effort.
In Ireland, national amnesia about the Great War kept stories like these confined to their estates. The country house and the Great War reclaims these rich and varied experiences, revealing valuable insight and context about the service of upper-class Anglo-Irish soldiers and the ways in which their families dealt with their service and sacrifices. Individuals interested in the decline of the Anglo-Irish ascendency, the relationship between class and military service in Ireland, or the relationship between class and the period of war and revolution should find value in the essays in this volume.
