Richard Butler's study of Irish courthouses and prisons between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries constitutes a significant addition to Irish urban history, as well as to the history of institutions, architecture and local government. The author's analysis builds on pioneering work by Edward McParland, Maurice Craig and C.E.B. Brett, but also more recent work of Christine Casey and Andrew Tierney among others, as well as the relevant international literature, with which he engages throughout.

The book is divided into seven primary chapters, concluding ‘Reflections’ and four appendices; Appendix A, in which a detailed history is provided of every known assize courthouse and county gaol in Ireland, is a substantial work in itself and will serve as a valuable reference point for future scholars. The first three chapters consider the evolution of the Irish assize courthouse between the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century: much of the discussion centres on the evolving role of grand juries, whose success in securing additional powers from central government to spend county money on vast edifices dwindled post-1830, owing to central government's curtailment of grand juries’ spending powers. Chapters 4–7 examine the construction of county gaols, which constituted the largest and most expensive prisons in each county. While Butler focuses his discussion on political dynamics and prison architecture, he grounds these chapters in the context of the transnational discourse on prison reform and the interplay of these ideas across the Atlantic world; the views of professional and voluntary ‘experts’ (such as government inspectors in the former case and philanthropic groups such as the influential, yet neglected, Association for the Improvement of Prisons and of Prison Discipline in Ireland in the latter) influenced the new design of gaol buildings, thus removing independence and autonomy from the architects’ profession and from local grand juries. Yet, the supposed failure of these projects led to the construction of a later generation of prisons – the ‘model’ prisons of the mid-nineteenth century, which contained larger cells and were better heated and ventilated: the best-known examples of these later prisons in Ireland were Belfast's Crumlin Road gaol (1850) and Dublin's Mountjoy gaol (1847–50), based on the example of Pentonville in London. The significant increase in committals to Irish gaols during the Famine years is mentioned by the author, although the impact of the 1847 Vagrancy Act, which criminalized simple acts of public begging and ‘wandering abroad’, thus swelling the country's prison system, goes unmentioned; this act, coming at the end of the book's subject period, warrants discussion here (and indeed further research by scholars), given its impact on committals in the Famine and post-Famine years. A strength of Butler's study is the recurring sign-posting to the reader of the international context of developments in Ireland: prison reformer John Howard's five visits to Ireland are discussed, as is the influence of the Italian reformer Cesare Beccaria (whose work was republished in Dublin) and the Englishman John de Haviland, whose Chery Hill penitentiary in Pennsylvania pioneered the separate system of confinement, later adopted at London's Pentonville, and subsequently in Belfast and Dublin.

The history of court and gaol building in provincial towns reveals much in respect of social and economic conditions, and the operation of local government. The case-study of Tullamore, King's County (Co. Offaly) is illustrative in this regard. For a period of 50 years (from the late eighteenth century until the 1830s) local elites in Philipstown (now Daingean) successfully fought off attempts to relocate the county's assizes to the growing town of Tullamore. Following years of lobbying of the Dublin Castle administration by the respective landlords of the two towns – the Ponsonbys of Philipstown and the Burys of Charleville, Tullamore – an act of parliament transferring the assizes to Tullamore, thus effectively making it the county town, received the royal assent in the summer of 1832 and the assizes were first held in the newly built courthouse three years later. Butler makes clear that economic benefits, to the wider county but more especially to landed property, were to the fore in the landlords’ lobbying. Sure enough, the fates of the two towns were dramatically transformed by the relocation of the assizes: Tullamore flourished, while Philipstown spiralled into decline. The King's County instance was not unique and similar intra-county disputes manifested themselves in counties Waterford, Tipperary and Antrim in this same period.

This volume constitutes another impressive achievement by publisher Cork University Press, building on the success of their other generously illustrated volumes: Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape (1997; 2nd edn, 2011), Atlas of the Great Irish Famine (2012) and Atlas of the Irish Revolution (2017). The presentation of the volume is to a high standard: maps and photographs are well chosen and beautifully produced; newly drawn maps and figures are clear and well-designed. Butler's Building the Irish Courthouse and Prison is an excellent piece of scholarship, making a valuable contribution to Irish urban history and, being reasonably priced, is thankfully accessible to as wide an audience as possible.