The harmony between great castles and their ornamental grounds is rarely seen in such perfect form as at Johnstown Castle. The gardens and grounds were designed by Daniel Robertson, of Powerscourt fame, assisted by Martin Day. The castle itself was home to two prominent Wexford families, the Esmondes and the Grogans, who have between them occupied the grounds from the fifteenth century right up to 1945. Today the castle is owned by Teagasc, the Agricultural and Food Development Authority, who manage the estate and provide access to the public. This book is the first published history of the castle, and in these pages author, historian and Wexford native Liam Gaul, explores the development of this imposing aspect of Wexford and national heritage from its earliest beginnings.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Over seven million people left Ireland over the course of the nineteenth century. This book is the first to put that huge population change in its religious context, by asking how the Irish Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian churches responded to mass emigration. Did they facilitate it, object to it, or limit it? Were the three Irish churches themelves changed by this demographic upheaval? Focusing on the effects of emigration on Ireland rather than its diaspora, and merging two of the most important phenomena in the story of modern Ireland – mass emigration and religious change – this study offers new insights into both nineteenth-century Irish history and historical migration studies in general. Its five thematic chapters lead to a conclusion that, on balance, emigration determined the churches’ fates to a far greater extent than the churches determined emigrants’ fates.