Virtual slave labour in the great houses

MUCH has been said about the Government’s financial intentions towards Lissadell House. However, very little has been written about why these ‘great’ houses were built and run as virtual ‘mini Englands’ in pre-independence and, indeed, post-independence Ireland.

My grandmother worked in one such great house near Dublin in the early 1920s. She was paid the princely sum of €3 a year and had the joyous luxury of having every fourth Sunday off. This was slave labour, or indentured servitude, masquerading as servant labour.

The labour camp mood of many great houses was manifested in the high walls to keep ’mini-England’ safe against the restless natives.

One cannot dispute the intrinsic architectural value of many of these houses but, equally, one should not forget that their existence was solely reliant on the availability of cheap labour, the payment of slave-like wages, and free land largely confiscated from native Irish owners during the plantation of Ireland in the 15th and 16th centuries.

By all means, encourage the government to do the right thing by the wonderful buildings this State has inherited. But let’s not forget to recall the feudal origins of these houses and the fact that the death knell for Ireland’s great houses and the master class who owned them was sounded by modern employment laws and the need to pay decent wages in post-independence Ireland.

Jennifer Macnamara,

Lisnabru,

Broadford,

Co Clare.