Lilliput Press 2026
Hardback, 304 pages
Since 2012, Robert O’Byrne’s Irish Aesthete has shed fresh light on Ireland’s architectural inheritance. In this new volume, Buildings of Ireland: Known and Unknown, he turns his discerning eye to a remarkable selection of sites in the care of the Office of Public Works. From celebrated landmarks like Castletown House and the Rock of Cashel to lesser-known ruins tucked down quiet boreens, these pages uncover a country layered with memory: grand houses and fragile abbeys, castles and gardens, round towers and forgotten churches. Some are familiar, many are not – but all are open to be seen, and to be understood anew.
With text and sumptuous photographs by O’Byrne, this book offers more than a guide: it is an invitation to travel, to look closely, and to discover the stories held in stone across Ireland. ‘In putting together the present book, making a selection was perhaps the greatest challenge … my wish is to offer a mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar.
This is a personal selection: someone else compiling the book might have made different choices. But it is intended to act as an introduction and a guide to the rich diversity of Ireland’s architectural heritage, a gazetteer that encourages readers to set out on their own voyages of discovery.’
A former Vice-President of the Irish Georgian Society, Robert O’Byrne is today one of Ireland’s best-known writers and lecturers specializing in the country’s historic houses and gardens. He is the author of more than a dozen books, among them Hugh Lane: A Biography, Luggala: The Story of a Guinness House, Digging New Ground: The Irish Country House Garden 1650–1900, Left Without a Handkerchief and Romantic Irish Homes. For many years he has been a contributor to Apollo Magazine, The Burlington Magazine and the Irish Arts Review. During 2021/22 Robert curated a number of events, including exhibitions, lectures and a conference, all on the theme of Ireland’s country house gardens for the Irish Georgian Society. In autumn 2021, his series on the same subject, Ireland’s Historic Gardens, was shown on RTÉ 1 television.
