Lissadell House

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Teach Lios an Daill aka Lissadell House, is a stately home built in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. It was the childhood home of the Countess Markievicz (Constance Georgine Gore-Booth), her sister Eva Gore-Booth and her brother Josslyn Gore-Booth.

Lissadell House

Countess Markievicz

Constance was one of the leaders of the 1916 Rising (aka Easter Rising or the Easter Rebellion), and was the first woman to be elected to Dáil Eireann, where she served as Minister for Labour (thus becoming the first woman minister in a modern Western European democracy), and was also the first woman to be elected to the House of Commons at Westminster, London (where she declined to take her seat).

1916 Easter Rising

Eva was a poet of distinction and an active suffragist, clashing with the young Winston Churchill over barmaids’ rights in 1908.

Sir Winston Churchill

Josslyn created at Lissadell one of the premier horticultural estates in Europe. This horticultural enterprise has now been recreated at Lissadell.

The great poet W. B. Yeats was friendly with the Gore-Booth sisters and stayed at Lissadell in 1892 and 1893. He immortalised Lissadell and the Gore-Booth sisters in his poetry:

The light of evening, Lissadell
Great windows open to the south
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle. …

Many a time I think to seek
One or the other out and speak
Of that old Georgian mansion, mix
pictures of the mind, recall
That table and the talk of youth,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.

W. B. Yeats

W. B. Yeats

The first Lissadell House was built in the townland of Lissadill by the Gore-Booth family between 1750-1760 (in front of the current house). In 1906 the current house and buildings were valued at £347 and remained a Gore-Booth family residence up until the 1990s. The house has been open to the public for many years and underwent extensive restoration in 2016.

~ Have you an Ancestor associated with this building or estate? If so, you can connect them by adding Lissadell House to their Ancestor Chronicle here.

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