Where Geography and History Meet: Heritage Tourism and the Big House in Ireland

Abstract

Abstract With tourist activity expected to become the largest source of employment by the end of the millenium, this paper examines heritage tourism, its framing of history, and its relationship with narratives of national identity. Challenging analyses which suggest that the heritage industry merely presents a sanitized or bogus version of the past, I present an instance in which an historical icon is presented to a popular audience in a provocative and nuanced rendering of the past. Focusing on one particularly controversial element of Ireland's past—the big house or stately home—this paper charts its incorporation into the historical imagination through literature, analyzes its representation as a heritage icon through the example of Strokestown Park House in County Roscommon, and argues that the big house's incorporation into the heritage landscape has released it from its confinement as a social and spatial signifier of elite culture. By situating the interpretation of the house in the local spatial context and connecting it to wider regional, national, and international geographies, this house has helped advance popular understandings of the past.