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Preface
My childhood was spent in very close proximity to, and often within, the demesnes of three big houses in County Down, Northern Ireland. Beside the village of Greyabbey, where I lived, is Rosemount House, which is still owned by the Montgomery family. A few miles to the east is Ballywalter Park, home to Lord Dunleath, and 1 mile to the north is Mount Stewart, which is now owned by the National Trust, where Lady Mairi Bury still resides. Thus was acquired a lifelong fascination with those hidden worlds behind the high stone walls and the sheltering belts of deciduous trees. In due course, that fascination, allied with a later interest in technology, was to result in the research for this book.
The “big house” is, in one sense, a misnomer. If some landowners' houses were palatial, others were relatively small. There was no homogeneity of architectural style, either; extant examples range from the impressive Irish Palladian Castletown, County Kildare, to a substantial farm dwelling such as Ballyboughlin, County Offaly.1 Irish landowners, too, were of mixed stock, variously claiming descent from native Irish