British solutions to Irish problems: representations of Ireland in the British architectural press, 1837-53

Existing scholarship on representations of Ireland in the British press has overlooked a subset of nineteenth–century publications: architectural periodicals. By analysing their coverage of Irish issues over a fifteen year period, including industrial exhibitions staged in Cork and Dublin, this article challenges the notion that the immediate post–famine years were a period of diminished interest in Irish affairs. Architectural periodicals suggested that Ireland’s problems could only be solved through greater Anglicization, as shown in their depictions of romanticised Irish peasants, government–sponsored engineering projects, and the construction of Irish workhouses.