Madam, - We would like to add our support to the suggestion that the State should purchase Lissadell. As home to Constance Markievicz, suffragette, socialist, revolutionary and the first woman elected to Westminster, the house's historical significance is assured. Eva Gore-Booth, her sister, was no less a figure. An admired painter and poet, she was also a tireless suffragette, pacifist and trade unionist who dedicated her life to bettering the economic and political standing of women in Ireland and Britain.
Ireland currently has no centre dedicated to the history of Irish women. Lissadell would provide a fitting location for such a centre, expanding out from the careers of women involved in the public life of this State to consider the changes that have occurred in the domestic lives of women during the past four centuries. From the gracious rooms Yeats recalled in his famous poem, to the extensive kitchens, the house and its estate comprise an invaluable lieu de memoire for Ireland's social history, and could become a place where tourism, scholarship and education pool their resources to recover a lost history. - Yours, etc.,
SELINA GUINNESS, Department of Humanities, Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology; Dr URSULA BARRY, WERRC, UCD; NÓIRÍN CLANCY, Women's Human Rights Project, Dublin; Dr CLAIRE CONNOLLY, Centre for Cultural and Critical Theory, University of Cardiff; Dr LINDA CONNOLLY, Department of Sociology, University College, Cork; Dr PATRICIA COUGHLAN, Department. of English, University College, Cork; MARY DORCEY, poet; Dr CLARE HUTTON, School of Advanced Studies, University of London; Dr MARGARET KELLEHER, Department of English, NUI, Maynooth; Dr SIOBHÁN KILFEATHER, Department of English, University of Sussex; Dr CHRISTINA HUNT MAHONY, Director, Centre for Irish Studies, Catholic University of America, Washington; Prof LUCY McDIARMID, Department of English, Villanova University; RACHEL MULLEN, Women's Aid; Dr TINA O'TOOLE, Department of English, University College, Cork; Dr PATRICIA PALMER, Department of English, University of York; Dr SENIA PASETA, St Hugh's College, Oxford University; Dr DEANA RANKIN, Girton College, Cambridge University; Dr NIAMH REILLY, Women's Studies/Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Limerick; Prof ANN SADDLEMYER, Emeritus Professor, University of Toronto; Dr MOYNAGH SULLIVAN, Department of English, University College, Dublin.
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Madam, - Ms Egan (July 1st) fondly recalls her visits to Lissadell House. The mansion is indeed, for better or worse, part of Sligo's history.
Many, like Ms Egan, who favour the purchase by the State of Lissadell House, are not aware that much of its contents have been auctioned off. Gone, the doll's house so loved by her daughter. Gone too, the rocking horse to the highest bidder. Furniture, paintings by Constance Markievicz, memorabilia, all were sold.
It is precisely such family items, paintings, and furniture that give integrity to a home. They tell us how the people who lived there ruled, lived and played. They are the reasons why people would want to visit Lissadell. Without these items there is nothing upon which to gaze, to touch, to feel, nothing that connects us to the past. The walls of Lissadell House have little intrinsic value. What is left to preserve? Shorn of its memorabilia a home becomes an edifice, a cold and empty place. - Yours, etc.,
JOE MC GOWAN, Mullaghmore, Co Sligo.