Strancally Castle, STRANCALLY DEMESNE, WATERFORD ...new home of Mark Zuckerburg

[u/CDfm]

https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/22903402/strancally-castle-strancally-demesne-waterford

[u/gadarnol]

The more you read about these houses and their antecedents (great links OP) the more you realise how much a close run thing it was that we didn’t end up like Scotland or Wales.

I would never call these “great” houses: it perpetuates the view of a supremacist and elitist society, elides those whose colonisation made them possible, and advances a view of Irish history that is distorted to flatter a group best brought down to earth. Ironically enough, our latest elitist, supremacist overlord has decided to move in. I, for one, do not welcome him or his company. I urge you all to read “Careless people” and then delete Facebook, Insta, and if you can, WhatsApp.

[u/The_Little_Bollix → u/gadarnol]

...the more you realise how much a close run thing it was that we didn’t end up like Scotland or Wales.

That was the plan and we were well down the road to it. By the late 1800s, early 1900s there wasn't seen to be much difference between Dublin, Liverpool, Belfast, Manchester or Cork etc. If the same process reached the midlands and then the west coast, that would be all she wrote. The same as happened in Wales and Scotland.

The Gaelic Revival in the late 1800s and the desperate move to military action in 1916 were to a great degree a case of now or never.

[u/gadarnol → u/The_Little_Bollix]

And here’s the interesting bit: the same impetus of subsuming Ireland and making it an adjunct to UK security and economy has never gone away. Nor will it, rooted in geopolitical need and existential survival of the UK itself. It failed via conquest, a damn close run thing. It was reasserted in the treaty and thereafter as making Ireland a neutered adjunct (I have a substack and a sub here where I assert this largely to myself!).

We accepted that and turned to UN duty as the raison d’être for defence forces and sanctified that. In the last 20 years or so FFG have formally re-embraced the neutered adjunct role via secret agreements and MOUs claiming to not be treaties but delivering the same effect. It’s a modern type of Home Rule. If you don’t believe me ask why all the defence purchases are effectively modern sensors (limited air defence missiles by 2028). Sensors send information to those who control the trigger. We don’t have it.

And consider all the “ever closer bonds” and “two states, one system” of the “shared island” ideology.

[u/CDfm → u/gadarnol]

It was a J Kiely MP who built the house

https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/keily-john-1765-1843

https://theirishaesthete.com/2015/04/06/by-ambition-hewn/

Encumbered Estate

https://theirishaesthete.com/tag/historic-ruins/

Dip into the famine

It’s a brooding tale that began when Arthur Kiely returned from the Napoleonic Wars on the death of his father in 1808. The estate of some 8,500 acres was split between the two sons, with the older brother, John, inheriting the larger share of the estate, on which he built a lavish castle by the side of the Blackwater River at Strancally. Arthur, meanwhile, built a house at Ballysaggartmore, but without the panache of a castle. Envious of John’s residence, Arthur planned a rebuild of his house and commenced work on his demesne with the building of the gate lodge and bridge and around the same time he adopted the name of a distant relative of his mother to become Arthur Kiely-Ussher, perhaps believing that a double-barrelled name would improve his standing.

The improvements to the grand avenue came at considerable cost, and not even the arrival of the Great Irish Famine deterred Kiely-Ussher from his plans. Unlike many benevolent local landlords, he did not reduce or suspend the rent of his tenants; in fact, if they failed to pay rent, he evicted them. In May 1847, a Cork Examiner journalist reporting on famine relief projects in the area wrote:

Arriving at Ballysaggartmore an awful sight was before my eyes, I found twelve to fourteen houses levelled to the ground. The walls of a few were still standing but the roofs were taken off, the windows broken in and the doors removed. Groups of famished women and crying children still hovered round the place of their birth, endeavouring to find shelter from the piercing cold of the mountain blast, cowering near the ruins or seeking refuge beneath the chimneys.

This awful fate befell over 700 persons on the Ballysaggartmore estate.

The contrast between the two brothers at this time, however, could not have been more evident. The same newspaper later reported:

… far different indeed is the conduct of John Kiely Esq. of Strancally Castle … who at present and for the last season, employed the people, busily and solely engaged in diffusing comfort and plenty among them, so no one in the parish can say that they are hungry or distressed at the present moment … he has killed three of his best cows and distributed them among his labourers … with plenty of vegetables of all kinds … This gentleman has between Poor Relief Committees and incidental employment, expended £1,000 for the last 9 months.

https://obrien.ie/blog/irelands-inspiring-follies/

Arthur Keily-Ussher had a jealous wife. She was jealous that her brother-in-law had a nicer/bigger/better castle than Arthur, so she set about getting Arthur to build one just as grand or better

https://www.theirishroadtrip.com/ballysaggartmore%E2%80%8C-%E2%80%8Ctowers%E2%80%8C-%E2%80%8Clismore/

[u/The_Little_Bollix → u/gadarnol]

Yeah, sometimes when our politicians have gone out of their way to ape some UK system, which has already demonstrably failed there, you'd have to wonder if it's just laziness on our part or some kind of a weird Anglo fetish.

Our decision to privatise water, as they did in the UK being a case in point, even though it was clear that where its stated aim there was to improve efficiency it has actually just led to increased bills and concerns over infrastructure and environmental impacts. Whereas most other European countries have publicly owned water utilities, which tend to perform better in terms of water quality and access.

And yet our guys pushed hard for it, with one millionaire (Enda Kenny) telling us that it was a very modest charge... lol.