Salubrious Dwellings for the Dead: the Knockbreda Exemplars

James Stevens Curl

Architecture to house the dead has been known from the earliest times, and the mausoleum as a building-type has been manifest in some of the greatest buildings ever created, such as the Hellenistic Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. It has also been a feature of Imperial Rome, as in the Mausolea of Augustus and Hadrian, and has re-emerged in English gardens, such as the great exemplar at Castle Howard, Yorkshire. Ireland is a land of graveyards, in many of which the only roofed building will be a mausoleum, usually in need of care and attention.

This lecture celebrates some outstanding Irish mausolea, including the late-Georgian inventions in Knockbreda churchyard, County Down.