Walled Gardens: Scenes from an Anglo-Irish ChildhoodThis is a journey both into a time and a place - the South of Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s. The author describes a childhood outside the main currents of the twentieth century; her parents still went fox hunting and horse racing and relied on readily available servants from a vast and inexpensive work-pool. At the same time they had no central heating, no television, and the roof leaked. Like many other Anglo-Irish families they attempted outlandish and impractical schemes to maintain deteriorating driveways and crumbling houses. This is an affectionate yet unsentimental memoir of a transitional generation, one born too late to benefit from the last years of the Ascendancy, but too early to integrate into the mainstream of contemporary Irish life. |
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adult afternoon Aglish Alice Anglo-Irish Ardkeen arrived asked aware Ballinacourty Ballinakill Ballinaparka Ballydavid bathroom Battle of Kinsale beach beautiful Bishop Foy's boat brother called Catholic Charles Fort childhood Christmas Church of Ireland comfort County Waterford course death dress drink Dublin Dungarvan emotions English event father fear feeling felt friends Frumpie girls Glenville governess grandfather grandmother grandmother's grandparents great-aunts greenhouses hair horse imagine Irish Julia Kinsale kitchen knew later lawn letter lived looked lunch maids marriage married meals memories morning mother never occasionally once parents played Protestant realized remember Richard Cromwell Robert Royal Dublin Society seemed sense side sister slightly smell sometimes spent Stephen's Day stories Stradbally summer Sunday tell thing thought tiny told took uncle usually walk walled garden Waterford Whalley William Goffe woman Woodstown