Professor Terence Dooley

College positions: Parnell Fellow

Professor Terence Dooley is the Prnell Fellow at Magdalene College.

Terence Dooley is Full Professor of History and Director of the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates. He served as Head of Department from 2022 to 2025. He was elected Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2025. He was NUI Fellow in the Humanities in 2001-03, recipient of the Maynooth University Faculty of Arts and Humanities Senior Research Award in 2020, and Parnell Fellow in Irish Studies at Cambridge University, 2026-27.

In 2003, Terence founded and became director of the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates at Maynooth University, a public-private venture, supported by the state run Office of Public Works as well as a number of private benefactors. It aims to secure and enhance public appreciation of historic properties by supporting education, research and scholarly publication.
In 2008, along with Mary Heffernan of the OPW, Terence was co-founder of the OPW-Maynooth University Archive and Research Centre [OMARC] at Castletown House, which has become a major repository of Irish country house and estate archives.

Terence has published extensively on topics including Irish Country Houses, the Irish Land Commission, land questions and land reform in independent Ireland, pre-Famine crime and punishment, and the Irish Revolution 1912-23. His The Burning of the Big House: the Story of the Irish Country House in a Time of War and Revolution was published by Yale University Press in 2022. He is currently working on a new and expanded edition of his first monograph, The Decline of the Big House in Ireland (2001), to be published by Yale University Press in 2027. He was also author of the government report A Future for Irish Historic Houses? (2003) which led to the establishment of the Irish Heritage Trust.

Terence has supervised over twenty PhDs to successful completion (six of which were funded by the IRCHSS/IRC) on diverse topics including land questions and estate management in the nineteenth century, the Great Famine, revolution and land redistribution in Ireland, the Big House before and after independence, the establishment of psychiatric facilities in the Irish Free State, the Gaelic Athletic Association, politics and power in pre- and post-independence Dublin, the Irish National Stud, and Ireland's Gypsum industry. He has also supervised a large number of M.Litt and MA theses (around twenty-five of which have been published in the prestigious Maynooth Studies in Local History Series edited by Raymond Gillespie/Michael Potterton.) He has mentored seven Post-Doctoral Fellows. He sits on a number of public service committees, is a regular contributor on radio and television, and delivers numerous public lectures every year.

Research Intrests

  • Irish country Houses
  • Irish landed estates, land questions and land reform c. 1700 to the present
  • The work of the Irish Land Commission, 1881-1992
  • The Irish revolutionary period, 1912-23.
  • Crime and punishment in pre-Famine Ireland

Qualifications

  • BA 1981-84 NUI Maynooth
  • MA 1985-86 NUI Maynooth
  • PhD 1997 NUI Maynooth
  • Higher Diploma in Education, 1884-85

Career/Research Highlights

  • NUI Fellowship in the Humanities and Social Sciences NUI 2001
  • Faculty of Arts, Humanities, Celtic Studies and Philosophy Senior Research Award NUIM 2020
  • Elected Member of the Royal Irish Academy 2025

Professional Affiliations

  • Member of the Royal Irish Academy
  • National University of Ireland, Maynooth

KEY PUBLICATIONS

Monographs

Burning the Big House: the Irish country house in war and revolution. New Haven and London, 2022, 350 pages.

The Irish Revolution 1912-23: Monaghan. Dublin, 2017, 170 pages.

The decline and fall of the dukes of Leinster, 1872-1948: love, war, debt and madness. Dublin, 2014, 288 pages.

The murders at Wildgoose Lodge: agrarian crime and punishment in pre-Famine Ireland. Dublin, 2007, 280 pages.

The big houses and landed estates of Ireland: a research guide. Dublin, 2007, 160 pages.

The land for the people: the land question in independent Ireland, 1923-73. Dublin, 2004, 318 pages.

A future for Irish historic houses? a study of fifty houses. Report commissioned by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, and the Irish Georgian Society, 2003, 150 pages.

The greatest of the Fenians: John Devoy and Ireland. Dublin, 2003, 220 pages.

The decline of the big house in Ireland: a study of Irish landed families, 1860-1960. Dublin, 2001, 336 pages.

Edited Volumes

Land reform and legislation in Ireland, 1800-2024. Tony McCarthy, Annie Tindley. Dublin, 2024, 352 pages.

Visitors to the country house in Ireland and Britain, welcome and unwelcome. Christopher Ridgway. Dublin, 2023, 283 pages.

The intellectual word of the country house. Christopher Ridgway. Dublin, 2024, 256 pages.

Country house collections: past, present and future. Christopher Ridgway. Dublin, 2021, 320 pages.

The country house and its visitors: welcome and unwelcome. Christopher Ridgway. Dublin, forthcoming 2022, 320 pages.

Sport and leisure in the Irish and British country house. Christopher Ridgway. Dublin, 2019, 320 pages.

Women and the country house. Maeve O’Riordan, Christopher Ridgway. Dublin, forthcoming 2017, 260 pages.

The country house and the Great War, 1914-18: British and Irish experiences. Christopher Ridgway. Dublin, 2016, 206 pages.

The Irish country house: its past, present and future. Christopher Ridgway. Dublin, 2011, 267 pages.

Ireland’s polemical past: views in Irish history in honour of R.V. Comerford. Dublin, 2010, 223 pages.

Select referred articles and book chapters

Carton House and its contents: collection and dispersal in context, 1729-1949. Terence Dooley, in Terence Dooley and Christopher Ridgway (eds), Country house collections: past, present and future. Dublin, forthcoming Autumn 2021, 19 pages.

Stories of the Big House: new approaches to Irish country house studies. David Cannadine and Jeremy Musson (eds.), The country house, past, present and future: great houses of the British Isles. New York, 2018, pp. 185-91.

Irish land questions, 1879-1923. Tom Bartlett (ed.), Cambridge history of Ireland, vol. IV. Cambridge.

The Big House. Eugenio Biagini and Mary E. Daly (eds.), The Cambridge social history of modern Ireland. Cambridge, 2017, pp. 161-77.

Insane Féiners: the 1916 Rising in County Monaghan and its commemoration in 1966. P.J. Duffy and Eamon Ó Ciardha (eds.), Monaghan: history and society. Dublin, 2017, pp. 687-712.

The burning of Irish country houses, during the War of Independence. John Crowley et al. (eds.), Atlas of the Irish revolution. Cork, 2017.

The 1923 Land Act: some new perspectives. Tony McCarthy, in Mel Farrell, Jason Knirck and Ciara Meehan (eds.), A formative decade: Ireland in the 1920s. Dublin, 2015, pp. 132-156.

The destruction of the Irish country house. James Raven (ed.), Lost mansions: essays on the destruction of the country house. Basingstoke, 2015.

Land and people. Alvin Jackson (ed.), The Oxford handbook of modern Irish history. Oxford, 2014, pp. 107-25.

The fate of the country house in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Rolf Loeber et al. (eds.), Art and architecture of Ireland: vol. IV: architecture. Dublin, New Haven, London, 2014, pp. 384-87.

From aristocratic past to public heritage: comparative research on Russian and Irish country houses and landed estates after the revolutions. Christian Noack, in A.B. Sokolov and A.M. Ermakov (eds), Na peresecheniiakh Britanskoi istroii. Izdatelstvo YaGPU, 2013, pp. 82-127.

Tombstones of a departed ascendancy: the Irish country house since independence. Giles Waterfield and Rebecca Parker (eds.), Looking ahead: the future of the country house: The Attingham Trust’s 60th Anniversary conference papers. London, 2012, pp. 100-108.

It was like a scene from the ball in Gone with the Wind: social life at Castle Hyde, 1931-88. Terence Dooley and Christopher Ridgway (eds.), The Irish Country House: its past, present and future. Dublin, 2011, pp. 150-65.

The Land War in Drumlish, 1879-82. Martin Morris and Fergus O’Ferrall, Longford history and society, 2010.

National patrimony and political perceptions of the Irish country house in post-independence Ireland. Terence Dooley (ed.), Ireland’s polemical past: views of Irish history in honour of R.V. Comerford. Dublin, 2010, pp. 192-212.

Castle Hyde and the Great Famine, 1845-51. Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, vol. XII, 2009, pp. 54-71.

Copy of the marquis of Kildare’s household book, 1758. Archivium Hibernicum, LXII, 2009, pp. 183-220.

The mortgage papers of St. Patrick’s College Maynooth, 1871-1923. Archivium Hibernicum, LIX, 2005, pp. 106-235.

Land and politics in independent Ireland, 1923-48: the case for a re-appraisal. Irish Historical Studies, XXXIV, no. 134, November 2004, pp. 175-97.

IRA veterans and land division in independent Ireland, 1923-48. Fearghal McGarry (ed.), Republicanism in modern Ireland. Dublin, 2003, pp. 86-107.

Landlords and the land question, 1879-1909. Carla King (ed.), Land, famine and culture in Ireland. Dublin, 2000, pp. 116-39.

Monaghan Protestants in a time of crisis, 1919-22. R.V. Comerford et al. (eds), Religion, conflict and coexistence in Ireland. Dublin, 1990, pp. 235-51.

Publicly Accessible Commissioned Reports

A future for Irish historic houses? a study of fifty houses. Report commissioned by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, and the Irish Georgian Society, 2003, 150 pages.