Leagan Gaeilge   Text Version   Display: Zoom (-) (+)   View ( Normal High contrast ) Printer Friendly  A to Z  Sitemap

Iconic landscapes: settlement and society in Truagh, north county Monaghan, c. 1591 – c. 1800

Siobhán McDermott

Figure 1: Late seventeenth-century Matthew Ankektell memorial, St. Saviours Church of Ireland, Glaslough, Co. Monaghan. Altough the monument explicitly links the battle in which Matthew Anketell died with the wider Williamite/Jacobite conflict, primary research suggests that this skirmish was the violent culmination of a land struggle between the incoming Anketells and the McKennas who were members of the dispossessed Gaelic elite

An inter-disciplinary approach has been used to diachronically analyse the archaeological landscape of Early Modern Truagh, north Co. Monaghan. A variety of methodologies and sources have informed why colonial expansion necessitates cultural and socio-political ambiguity and how these equivocations were expressed in south Ulster.

The territory of Truagh is coterminous with the barony of the same name which once formed the nucleus of the former Gaelic medieval lordship of the McKennas. This neat, local world measures roughly 15 by 20 km, and contains just over 180 townlands. The two-hundred year period chosen for this study was one of critical change in that region. The social, political and economic worlds of historic Truagh have therefore been framed within the context of British colonial expansion, the emerging market economy and the wars of early modern and modern Europe.

In order to show how the landscape of Truagh can express shifting identities and socio-political ambiguity, four case-studies or ’iconic landscapes’ have been identified for the crucial periods in the settlement history of Truagh. These crucial periods are (1) the twilight of Gaelic domination, c.1591; (2) the expansion of the Ulster Plantation, c.1622; (3) attempting to consolidate a Protestant hegemony c. 1689; and (4) creating and disputing authority in the 18 ^th-century. Archaeological survey has targeted key settlement, conflict and ritual nodes within Truagh to illustrate periods of change. Select primary documents have also been searched to ascertain transformation in demographics, landholdings and land-ownership and socio-political structures. A growing sense that the social and political transitions heralded by British colonial expansion condoned anomalies, through the creation of situations and opportunities which facilitated and/or necessitated ambiguity, has developed. In turn these situations would often create opportunities for the socially ambitious. Finally, the degree to which this very local world was informed by wider socio-political spheres is a strikingly repetitive theme for each of the case-study landscapes.

E-mail siobhan.mcdermottnuigalway.ie

    

• Disclaimer
• Privacy
• Copyright
• Accessibility