Dr Suzanne Forbes

The commencement of the building of a countrywide network of army barracks in Ireland in the 1690s was a wholly new and innovative approach to dealing with the age-old problem of maintaining a standing army in both peace and wartime. The Irish model set the example for the rest of the British empire as the utility of residential military complexes became apparent. However, the impact of these barracks and their occupants upon Ireland at a local and national level have not been fully investigated. As sites of contested memory, there continues to be significant misunderstanding and misinterpretation of these buildings, both North and South, which in some cases leads to neglect and disharmony. This project will map all army barracks constructed in Ireland from the 1690s through to the end of a British Military presence in the Irish Free State in 1921-2. This work will build on a pilot project that has already identified 279 barracks sites for the period 1690-1822 and involved field work on County Armagh barrack sites, which in turn led to the development of a pilot map application as proof of concept (https://barracks18c.ucd.ie/). Additional data will be gathered on individual barracks, including textual evidence, building plans and images, and a short summary description of each site will be prepared. This will constitute the first complete inventory of all barracks in Ireland built while the whole island was under British governance. This research will facilitate quantitative and qualitative analysis of military barracks sites in Ireland and provide the groundwork for comparisons with Britain and other countries. It will also facilitate the creation of a range of outputs for use by the general public, educators, and researchers, including a web app that can be used for exploring these sites remotely as well as during visits to barrack locations. Co-Lead HEI partner is University College Dublin