Lecture in Community Centre, Borrisoleigh, on Friday 10th April at 8 o’clock.
Borrisoleigh: The Rural Community in a Larger Irish Setting by Liam Kennedy
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Borrisoleigh: The Rural Community in a Larger Irish Setting by Liam Kennedy.
The broad theme is social change in rural Ireland as seen through the prism of my own parish,
Borrisoleigh in North Tipperary. In the 1950s and the 1960s a number of studies appeared
which proclaimed the death of rural Ireland. Most of these came out of the West of Ireland
and somehow did not seem to fit the rural world I had experienced growing up in Tipperary.
Thus began an interest in marriage patterns, dowries, farm inheritance, land hunger, religious
change, women in rural society, and much else. I hope to explore these and related themes,
and would be delighted to hear of the life experiences of others as well.
Liam Kennedy is Professor of Economic & Social History at Queen’s University Belfast. He
was born in Borrisoleigh, Co. Tipperary, in 1946, well before the era of rural electrification,
the Friesian cow, Radio Telefís Eireann and the European Union. His interests include social
change in Irish rural society, the Great Irish Famine and the Troubles in Northern Ireland. He
is currently completing a book of historical essays, less than imaginatively titled The Irish,
due out in 2015 (maybe).