Edward Lear

THERE WAS AN OLD MAN CALLED EDWARD By Turtle Bunbury As he plunged his quill into the inkpot, Edward Lear exhaled contentedly. It might have taken him the best part of fifty years to complete the trip, but the best-selling English nonsense poet had finally made it to...

The Gunning Sisters

THE GUNNING SISTERS Croome Park, Worcestershire, October 1761. The dark room stank of death and poison as the Countess of Coventry breathed her last. Her once beautiful porcelain skin was badly pocked and already decaying. It was an astonishingly tragic finale for the...
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) – A Pioneering Feminist in Ireland

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) – A Pioneering Feminist in Ireland

Before she became one of the founding philosophers of feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft was governess to Viscount Kingsborough’s daughters at Mitchelstown Castle in north Cork. While Mary went on to marry  William Godwin (and so became mother to Mary Shelley, author of...
The Yelvertons, Viscounts Avonmore

The Yelvertons, Viscounts Avonmore

Originating in Norfolk, the Yelvertons rose through the ranks in England to become, at various times, Baron Grey de Ruthyn, Earl of Kent and Earl of Sussex. Another branch moved to Ireland where Viscount Avonmore was a leading legal eagle in the Georgian Age. This...

Stronge of Tynan Abbey, Co. Armagh

Stronge of Tynan Abbey, Co. Armagh Foreward “An Act for the Attainder of Divers Rebels, and for Preserving the Interest of Loyal Subjects. WHEREAS a most horrid invasion was made by your Majesty’s unnatural enemy the Prince of Orange, invited thereunto and assisted by...