Martinalia

Welcome to Martinalia. An academic career generates material which for one reason or another does not get into print. There are public lectures and keynote addresses. Some are never intended for publication. Others are commissioned for projects which never get off the ground. There is material prepared for teaching, which may be useful to colleagues and students involved in similar courses. Some projects seem worth sharing with interested readers even though they remain unfinished, lacking the final polish needed for conventional academic publication. Since 2014 I have used Martinalia to publish essays and research reports.
The term "Martinalia" was coined by my friend Jim Sturgis.

Religion, Irish nationalism and Gaelic games: the Dungourney GAA plaque

Early twentieth-century Ireland was driven by a dynamic mixture of nationalism, Catholicism and Gaelic games. In an era when few people (other than emigrants) travelled far from their native place, identification with the semi-abstract concept of the Irish nation was built upwards from fierce loyalties to locality, particularly to the parish. By organising inter-county competitions after its foundation in 1884, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) reinforced an intermediate level of patriotism, which particularly manifested itself in areas such Cork and Tipperary where the game of hurling inspired massive popular enthusiasm. These four elements – nationalism, religion, hurling and locality – are neatly interwoven in a memorial plaque beside the altar rail in the small and attractive parish church at Dungourney, near Midleton in County Cork.

The Garranjames Land League demonstrations of July 1881: labour, land and sand

Two mass demonstrations followed the politically motivated arrest of east Cork farmer Edmond O'Brien and Killeagh shopkeeper John Hyde in July 1881. The first illustrated the intention of Land League leaders to maintain and reinforce the cross-class alliance between tenants and labourers. The second dramatically highlighted the continuing use of sea sand as a fertiliser for grassland.^[1]

Great Expectations: Charles Dickens and 'fiscal headroom'

The notion of 'fiscal headroom' has infested early twenty-first century British political debate. It is a device that enables governments to claim that they have a cushion of funding available to respond to emergencies, hint at possible tax cuts and pay for eye-catching gimmicks. It may owe its origin to Charles Dickens.

The Gidea Hall timber sales of 1808 and 1809

In 1808 and 1809, there were two large sales of timber from the Gidea Hall estate near Romford in Essex. This essay examines the connection between these well-publicised auctions and a crisis in Britain's naval defence in the later years of the Napoleonic Wars, and attempts to discuss the nature of the timber that was offered for sale.

Doncaster Races and the downfall of a Victorian clerical pluralist

Although legislation passed in 1838 severely limited the capacity of Anglican clergymen to hold more than one benefice, nothing was done to disturb those who already enjoyed multiple livings. These pluralists proved to be embarrassingly durable, some of them surviving to draw what was in effect a sinecure income into the eighteen-seventies. There was a rare exception in 1874, when the eighty-one year-old Reverend J.W. King was pressured into resigning both his parishes in the diocese of Lincoln. However, what had angered Bishop Christopher Wordsworth was not King's pluralism, but the fact that he bred racehorses. King was seriously ill at the time and died a few months later.

Mistaking moonlight for morning

In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain and Ireland, many people – especially chldren – had only limited access to clocks and did not own watches. This Note describes three episodes in which bright moonlight was mistaken for morning. It is offered as a small contribution to the history of the subjective experience of Time.

The N25 Kinsalebeg upgrade, 2005-6

In 2005-6, Ireland's National Roads Authority, working with Waterford County Council, upgraded 2.6 kilometres of the N25 Cork-to-Rosslare national route at Kinsalebeg, in the area between Clashmore and Pilltown.

The Castlemartyr bypass: historical roots of a failure in government

This study has grown out of a private briefing exercise examining the failure to construct a short and desperately needed bypass around the congested village of Castlemartyr in east Cork, a dereliction not simply attributable to the successive groupings of politicians who have held office but more seriously to the process of government itself. It soon became clear that the problem had deep historical roots. There had been a time, around 1800, when Ireland had built new roads, mainly for stagecoaches but also to make it easier to move troops around the country. The coming of the railways had led to a century of fossilisation for the highways, although they were tarred by the 1920s for the use of motor vehicles. When Ireland industrialised after the Second World War, the roads inherited from the past were simply required to carry the massively increased burden of traffic, and the country has been catching up, or failing to catch up, ever since. Castlemartyr (and its neighbour, Killeagh) are easily eliminated bottlenecks on a highway of national importance between Cork and Rosslare, but the concept of a south-coast through route was slow to emerge and still does not seem to be fully recognised by the planning system.

Some naughty Victorian Latin

Educated people in nineteenth-century Britain spouted Latin quotations and traded Latin tags. Two centuries later, this makes them seem desperately serious – but sometimes they used the ancient classics as a source for nudge-nudge naughty allusions in a very un-Victorian manner.

The uses and abuses of advowsons: private patronage in the Church of England, 1780-1931

Appointments to more than half the parishes in the Anglican Church in England and Wales were in the hands of private patrons, through a device – now almost forgotten – called the advowson. Since advowsons were a form of private property, they could be bought and sold, and an extensive and blatantly commercial market culture grew up around their trade. Historians either ignore this fundamental career element in the Church of England, or treat it as a minor and marginal problem. In fact, advowsons copper-bottomed the class nature of the Anglican clergy. Indeed, the system, with or without the scandals associated with it, goes far to explain why so many people in England and Wales rejected the Established Church as a hypocritical racket.

Martinalia

Religion, Irish nationalism and Gaelic games: the Dungourney GAA plaque

The Garranjames Land League demonstrations of July 1881: labour, land and sand

Great Expectations: Charles Dickens and 'fiscal headroom'

The Gidea Hall timber sales of 1808 and 1809

Doncaster Races and the downfall of a Victorian clerical pluralist

Mistaking moonlight for morning

The N25 Kinsalebeg upgrade, 2005-6

The Castlemartyr bypass: historical roots of a failure in government

Some naughty Victorian Latin

The uses and abuses of advowsons: private patronage in the Church of England, 1780-1931

More Articles …