The Big House Era in Ireland
The Protestant settlers from Great Britain liked their big houses. These houses were very large in size and luxurious, but they were also used as a symbol of dominance or being 'bigger' than the Irish and their land when the English colonized Ireland in the late 16th century.
Elizabeth Bowen wrote of the big house in her book The Mulberry Tree (1986), p. 26.:
"Is it height- in this country of otherwise low buildings- that got these Anglo-Irish houses their 'big' name? Or have they been called 'big' with a slight inflection- that of hostility, irony? One may call a man 'big' with just that inflection because he seems to think the hell of himself."
Anglo-Irish big house
Many other Irish authors and poets have mentioned the Big House Era in their pieces as well.
One usually associates a big house with large families and/or a place where the community can come together. However, most of the Irish authors and poets who have mentioned the Big House Era in their pieces associate a big house with a cold physical space that has no other purpose than to isolate each individual, each social status and hierarchy, eventually disconnecting the community.
A poem by William Butler Yeats, House of Splendid Isolation (1937):
... I came on a great house in the middle of the night
Its open lighted doorway and its windows all alight
And all my friends were there and made me welcome too;
But I woke in an old ruin that the winds howled through; ...
The Big House architecture was so despised by the Irish that during the Irish Revolution (between 1919-1923) many of these houses were burned and destroyed.
Firemen hosing down the ruins of a big house that was burned down by forces opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty during the Irish Civil War, February 1923. (Check The Irish Times)