The Measures and Materiality of Improvement in Ireland

Abstract

This paper examines the impact and evidence of Improvement thinking on domestic and social spheres. Taking the example of Ireland it examines the origin and development of improving strategies and methodologies from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, in particular the widening application of reform to incorporate domestic, educational and moral concerns. Improvement measures were imposed on communities often by a land-owning class of differing social and religious origin, engendering socio-political tension still evident in Ireland today. Equally it was a period of new commercial opportunities and social betterment creating new class divisions that have been previously undervalued. This paper draws on work on a group of islands on the northern periphery of the country, where archaeological and historical evidence demonstrate that the reforms associated with the Improvement project were still underway well into the nineteenth century.