Mark Girouard on his 88th birthday outside Ham House. Photographs used with permission of Blanche Girouard.
Description:
The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB), in collaboration with the Irish Georgian Society, are delighted to be hosting an evening devoted to exploring the late Mark Girouard’s long association with Ireland. Girouard (1931-2022) was the grandson of the Marquis of Waterford and was part of the circle of architectural historians who fought for the preservation of Irish country houses from the 1960s onwards. Professor Edward McParland, Professor Finola O’Kane and Dr Kyle Leydon will discuss Girouard’s contribution to Irish architectural history, particularly in relation to the study and conservation of country houses.
The talks and discussion will be followed by a drinks reception
Cost: Є18 SAHGB/IGS members & Є22 for non-members
Speaker Bios:
Edward McParland is a Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College Dublin. He is the author of numerous publications with his most notable books being: James Gandon (1985), Public architecture in Ireland 1680-1760 (2001), and The language of architectural classicism (2024). He was co-founder, with Nicholas Robinson, of The Irish Architectural Archive.
Finola O’Kane is a landscape historian, architect, and Professor at the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy, University College Dublin. Her books include Landscape Design in Eighteenth-Century Ireland: Mixing Foreign Trees with the Natives (Cork, 2004), Ireland and the Picturesque: Design, Landscape Painting, and Tourism, 1700–1840 (PMC/Yale, 2013) and the recent Landscape design and revolution in Ireland and the United States 1688-1815 (PMC/Yale, June, 2023). She has also published widely on eighteenth-century Dublin, Irish urban and suburban history and plantation landscapes, with Ireland, slavery and the Caribbean: Interdisciplinary perspectives, co-edited with Ciaran O'Neill published in 2023 by Manchester University Press.
Kyle Leyden is Lecturer in Early Modern Architecture and Visual Culture at The Courtauld. He has published widely on the subjects of British and Irish architecture of the eighteenth century, with a particular focus on the political agency of architecture within patriotic movements across the British Empire. Between 2019 and 2022, he acted as research assistant to Mark Girouard, and assisted in the research for and editing of his Biographical Dictionary of English Architecture 1540-1640. He also worked with Girouard on his final research projects, re-assessing the attribution and dating of works carried out at Tyrone House in Dublin and Curraghmore in Co. Waterford, where Girouard had spent part of his childhood.