Forgotten Ireland: 50 Abandoned Places and the Stories Behind Them (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798196107313)

Forgotten Ireland is a richly researched journey through 50 abandoned, overlooked and historically charged places across the whole island of Ireland - from Famine villages and workhouse ruins to Big Houses, evacuated islands, industrial sites, Magdalene laundries, border crossings and the physical remains of the Troubles.

From a deserted Famine village on the slopes of Croagh Patrick to Maze/Long Kesh and the H-Blocks associated with the 1981 hunger strike, from a Georgian mansion burned during the Civil War to a Connemara coastguard station whose officer fed 200 starving people a day and was reprimanded for it, this book tells the stories that heritage guides often leave unasked.

This is not a photography book.

Every entry answers four questions:

• Who built it?
• Who funded it?
• What specific decision caused its abandonment?
• What remains today?

Each chapter includes three striking, independently checkable facts and ends in the present tense - with the current legal status, ownership, access position and any ongoing inquiry, conservation or redevelopment process. Because many of these stories are not finished.

The fifty places are organised into six powerful sections:

• The Ascendancy and Its Ruins - 10 Big Houses, mansions and castles shaped by the Famine, the Land Acts and political violence
• Famine Landscapes - 8 workhouses, mass graves, eviction sites, deserted villages and relief sites from 1845-1852
• Institutional Ireland - 8 psychiatric hospitals, industrial schools, Magdalene laundries and mother and baby homes
• Industrial Collapse - 8 linen mills, coal mines, shipyards, factories and power stations from Belfast to the Shannon
• Island Ireland - 8 evacuated, abandoned and stubbornly inhabited Atlantic islands
• Border Country and the Troubles - 8 watchtowers, fortified stations, ambush sites, prison blocks, border crossings and contested walls

Built from documented sources, official inquiry reports, archival records, heritage surveys and local authority records, Forgotten Ireland traces the decisions that left marks in stone, field, road, wall and shoreline.

The bodies beneath the car park in Cork are documented. The institutional buildings converted into hotels and apartments are documented. The island families who waited years for the government to answer their evacuation requests are documented. The ruins are not just atmospheric backdrops - they are evidence.

For readers who want Irish history from the ground up, one place at a time.

Perfect for readers of Irish history, Famine history, the Troubles, abandoned places, heritage non-fiction, social history, institutional history and hidden histories of Ireland. An ideal gift for anyone with a connection to Ireland, north or south, at home or abroad.