On the afternoon of Wednesday, 10 January 1923, Lulu Bagwell wrote to
her mother-in-law Harriet informing her the family house had been
destroyed in a blaze earlier that morning. Lulu and the children had
been obliged to stand shivering at gunpoint on the lawn watching the
conflagration, the raiders responsible for the fire only leaving when it
was too late to save Marlfield. Afterwards she discovered her handbag
and all the family's overcoats had been stolen. 'We hadn't even a
handkerchief, ' she lamented, 'everything has gone.'
The fate of Marlfield was not unique. It is estimated that between 250
and 300 Irish country houses were burnt in the early 1920s during the
course of the War of Independence and subsequent Civil War. The reasons
behind their destruction were various, but because of their scale and
prominence on the Irish landscape, setting fire to them was judged by
perpetrators to be good propaganda. Relatively little investigation has
been undertaken into this devastation - to both property and lives.
But how was it for the owners of these buildings? How did they feel
when, in the course of just a few hours, they saw their worlds
overturned? Hitherto historians have concentrated on the actions and
motivation of those responsible for carrying out the burnings. Left
Without a Handkerchief will tell the other side of the story, of history
seen from the perspective of the losers, left homeless and struggling to
cope, emotionally and financially.
A key source for this story will be under-explored material held by the
national archives of both Ireland and Britain. Correspondence back and
forth, between claimants and the relevant authorities, reveal the extent
of suffering experienced by those whose houses had been burnt, often
shock that the local community, of which they had thought themselves
part, displayed little concern in the aftermath of their devastation.
These official documents will be supplemented by other material:
letters, diaries, memoirs, some of it coming directly from descendants
of the house owners and not previously shared inpublic.
Left Without a Handkerchief will fill a gap in the national narrative,
featuring the stories of ten houses and their owners. From Galway to
Wexford, Mayo to Cork, it will give a voice to the dispossessed, to the
people who thought they had a place in Ireland until, usually in the
course of a single night, they were disabused of this belief. As the
centenary of the onset of house burnings arrives, now is the time to
tell their story.
