Town and country
Book Details
Published by Royal Irish Academy
November 2023
PaperbackNumber of pages: 300
ISBN: 9781911479819
Town & country: perspectives from the Irish Historic Towns Atlas edited by Sarah Gearty and Michael Potterton - coming soon!
The interconnection between town and country is the central theme in this new volume. It is based on a seminar held in 2021 where contributors used and compared historic town atlases to understand how the urban landscape interacted with its suburban surroundings and rural hinterland through time. Four essays focus on Ireland, looking at the enduring and complex relationships between the urban and the rural from monastic times through to the nineteenth century. More broadly, an introduction (by Michael Potterton) gives the international context and a concluding essay (by Chris Dyer) discusses the study of town and country as two very complementary fields of research.
Town & country is dedicated to the historical geographer and renowned cartographic historian, J.H. Andrews, who died in 2019. It includes Andrews’s seminal essay on the topographical development of the town of Kildare, from the first publication of the Irish atlas series in 1986, alongside essays on his life’s work and a bibliography of his extensive writings.
The book is full colour and illustrated with over 60 maps and images.
Contributors
J.H. Andrews, H.B. Clarke, Frank Cullen, Chris Dyer, Raymond Gillespie, Richard Haworth, Arnold Horner, Mary Davies, Jim Galloway, Ruth Johnson, Colm Lennon, Keith Lilley, Ruth McManus, Margaret Murphy, Séamas Ó Maitiú, Michael Potterton, Brendan Scott, Anngret Simms.
Editors
Sarah Gearty, Michael Potterton.
About the authors
Sarah Gearty
Sarah Gearty is cartographic and managing editor of the Irish Historic Towns Atlas project. She has overseen the production of over 15 town atlases and several ancillary publications/projects. She was co-author on the atlas of Longford (2010, with Fergus O'Ferrall and Martin Morris) and co-editor of Maps and texts: exploring the Irish Historic Towns Atlas (with H.B. Clarke, 2013).
Michael Potterton
Michael Potterton is a Lecturer and Director of the MA in Local History in the Department of History at Maynooth University. He is Chair of the Irish Historic Towns Atlas and one of two Irish representatives on the International Commission for the History of Towns. He is a member of the editorial board of Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, is the Series Editor of Maynooth Studies in Local History and is Principal Investigator on the RIA-funded Moynagh Lough Project. Michael worked for seven years as a Senior Research Archaeologist with the Discovery Programme and a further seven years as Editor with Four Courts Press. He is a Director of Dublinia and the Medieval Trust and in 2011 he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. Among his extensive list of publications are (with Margaret Murphy) Dublin Region in the Middle Ages (2010) and (as co-editor with Christiaan Corlett), The town in medieval Ireland in the light of recent archaeological excavations (2020).
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