Landscapes of desire: parks, colonialism and identity in Victorian and Edwardian Ireland

Summary

This paper will examine Ireland’s Victorian and Edwardian parks as a politicised nexus of encounter in which landscape design, architectural style and social practice combined to create class, gender and colonial identities.  Public spaces form a crucial element of the urban landscape, providing a context for particular forms of political engagement and identity construction.  In Ireland, such landscapes created regulated spaces of display and consumption in which the natural world and the urban populace could be objectified, domesticated and their moral worth evaluated.  Park architecture and monuments underpinned ideals of social and moral improvement, while planting and design allowed concepts of order and disorder, inside and outside, to be addressed, so that spatial relationships came to stand for the troublesome relations between people.  Yet, such ideals did not go unchallenged and from their opening, parks were contested landscapes, subject to vandalism and other forms of subversive behaviour.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Obscured by Clouds: Landscapes in Historical Archaeology   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2013

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 123