Castles and colonists

An archaeology of Elizabethan Ireland

By (author) Eric Klingelhofer

Hardback - £85.00

Publication date:

01 September 2010

Length of book:

192 pages

Publisher

Manchester University Press

Dimensions:

216x138mm

ISBN-13: 9780719082467

Castles and colonists is the first book to examine life in the leading province of Elizabeth I's nascent empire. Klinglehofer shows how an Ireland of colonising English farmers and displaced Irish 'savages' are ruled by an imported Protestant elite from their fortified manors and medieval castles.
Richly illustrated, it displays how a generation of English 'adventurers' including such influential intellectual and political figures as Spenser and Ralegh, tried to create a new kind of England, one that gave full opportunity to their Renaissance tastes and ambitions.
Based on decades of research, Castles and colonisers details how archaelogy had revealed the traces of a short-lived, but significant culture which has been, until now, eclipsed in ideological conflicts between Tudor queens, Hapsburg hegemony and native Irish traditions,

‘This is both a significant and an important volume…an account of his excavation of Kilcolman, [is] followed by his interesting thesis on how much Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene influenced vernacular architecture throughout Ireland and Britain.’
The Spenser Review, January 2013