This welcome addition to Ireland's growing urban history literature arises out of a 2014 conference run by the Society for the Study of Nineteenth Century Ireland. It aims to make ‘a new and quite distinct contribution to the literature’ (p. 4) through its focus on urban spaces, reflecting the ‘spatial turn’ in history which recognises that space is not a neutral container but at the same time both reflects and influences behaviour and power relations. Recent discourse is outlined in the introduction and further taken up in many of the following nine chapters.
The collection begins with Laura Johnstone's detailed and well-illustrated examination of the transformation of Monkstown and Salthill into a fashionable middle-class residential suburb. As might be expected, the ground landlords played a key development role, setting out plots which were leased to speculative builders. The homogenous appearance of the resultant residential terraces, inspired by Brighton's seafront terraces, belies the piecemeal nature of the process. The scale of the owners’ vision is revealed by their ambitious unrealised scheme for the Royal Paragon, a semi-elliptical terrace to rival Bath's Royal Crescent. In carefully teasing out the gradual change of this in-between landscape incorporating fishing village, farms, seasonal resort and country villas to a permanent residential area, the chapter demonstrates the value of examining transitional spaces rather than just focusing on the finished product. A different type of housing is considered in Matthew Potter's account, which highlights the fact that Ireland had one of the world's earliest and proportionately largest programmes of municipal social housing. A useful table summarises relevant housing legislation for 1866 to 1914. Using a sample of eleven municipal authorities, Potter considers the possible reasons for the differing output between various comparable municipal authorities, offering a potential starting point for further investigation.
Jonathan Wright's ‘experiment in spatial microhistory’ (p. 62) draws on recent work by Katrina Navickas and Leif Jerram to inform his reading of the functional and symbolic aspects of the White Linen Hall and its immediate environs of Donegall Square and Donegall Place (Belfast), from initial development in the early 1780s to the turn of the twentieth century. A micro-historical approach is also taken by Georgina Laragy to counter Émile Durkheim's claims that social isolation in cities was a cause of urban suicides. Drawing on a sample of 127 suicides from Dublin morgue registers between 1901 and 1915, she demonstrates that physical proximity and emotional ties were features of Irish urban life. The chapter is at its most interesting in using testimony from coroners’ inquests to undertake a geographic reconstruction of the lives of the key individuals.
The segregation of space was an important aspect of institutional life. In her chapter on Dublin boarding schools, Mary Hatfield draws on two examples, a Roman Catholic school for girls and an institution associated with the British army which initially provided for both boys and girls. These very different cases reveal how spaces for urban childhood were constructed by adults, depending on the gender and class composition of the school. This chapter provides a useful reminder that urban childhood was not inevitably impoverished and ‘at risk’, despite the dominance of these discourses.
Olwen Purdue's account of the Belfast workhouse from 1880 to 1905 clearly articulates how the use, regulation and control of space was a fundamental part of the ideology of the Irish Poor Law as materialised in the workhouse. However, in a rapidly-growing city pressures on space led to a breakdown in regulations. An intriguing picture of the workhouse as a contested space emerges, with inmates ‘using its spaces in ways that the architects of the Poor Law never intended’ (p. 124). This account provides a glimpse of ‘the poor’ as individuals with agency, at odds with their frequent characterisation as passive recipients of charity and welfare.
A very different institutional environment was offered at Purdysburn Villa Colony, the public asylum for the insane near Belfast constructed between 1902 and 1912. Slums were seen as generative of disease, including mental ill-health, which could be countered by the healthy semi-rural and agricultural spaces of the asylum's therapeutic environment. Gillian Allmond provides a highly detailed account of the architectural spaces of the villas at Purdysburn, with particular reference to ventilation and light. She also suggests that the spatial configuration of the villas was a means whereby the ‘asylum authorities implicitly advanced bourgeois lifestyles as addressing the moral, mental and physical weakness of the working classes’ (p. 142).
Mary Jane Boland's consideration of images of Ireland's urban world from 1790 to 1820 provides a useful reminder that such representations were not purely snapshots of reality to be taken at face value, but had constructed meanings which served ‘to propagate the fundamental values and ideologies of those that were consuming’ them (p. 165). Her account draws largely on the work of artists Nathaniel Grogan and William Turner de Lond. While using a recognisable European visual language, their emphasis on social order and civic improvement contrasts with Hogarth's depiction of urban decay. She argues that these positive visualisations, which emphasise the aspirations of a physically and socially ordered urban life, shed light on the ideologies and values of the urban dwellers who viewed them. In the final chapter, Oliver Betts looks beyond Ireland to the spaces experienced and shaped by Irish migrants in the steel cities of Pittsburgh, Coatbridge and Middlesbrough in the period from 1850 to 1900. This is an interesting examination of how migrants formed identities which were shaped by themselves but also by their surroundings, and expressed and reinforced through public practice.
Overall this is an innovative, varied and intriguing volume which inspires the reader to engage with new ways of exploring our urban past. A range of running themes will attract readers interested in different aspects of urban history. Space is typically constructed to reinforce hierarchies and exercise control, but can also be used to challenge or subvert authority. Several of the essays illustrate the changing functions and meanings of locations through time. This dynamic quality of urban space is an important factor which deserves further investigation. The volume is somewhat undersold by its rather bland title, and would benefit from additional illustrations, particularly maps.
In Ireland, as elsewhere, urban history attracts scholars from a range of disciplines. Scholars of history, architecture, archaeology and art history are represented in this volume, but the absence of geographers is disappointing. Nevertheless, this is an extremely worthwhile and timely publication which serves to demonstrate both the vitality and potential of the field. It is highly recommended to all those interested in, or curious about, urban history.
