Body of evidence: a history of Irish iconoclasm | Essay | Architectural Review
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Whether myth or fact, who we are is predicated on where we are. Growing up in Ireland, at school we were taught across many subjects, from history to religious studies, that ours was the fabled ‘land of saints and scholars’. It was a legend often articulated in architecture, from the edge-of-the-world monastic beehive cells of Skellig Michael to the medieval round towers where monks supposedly sought sanctuary from marauding Viking raiders. Ireland, we were told with questionable patriotic zeal, had ‘saved civilisation during the Dark Ages’. Ours was a nation of iconographers, a view that could be deciphered not just in the Book of Kells, but also in the built environment.
It was evident, however, even as a child, that Ireland was also a nation of iconoclasts. Despite what we were taught, there was no single definitive lineage of Irish history or architecture. In the north especially, the most pronounced architecture belonged to two strands: the ecclesiastical and the colonial, Rome and London, spires and watchtowers. In the shadows of such structures, people tried to live as independently as they could. There were other forms of architecture of course, from Neolithic forts to grand Palladian houses, thatched cottages to Georgian townhouses – yet these too were simplified into binaries that conceal histories that are much more complicated.
