The Lurgan Lectures: ‘The Origins and the Development of the Brownlow Demesne and Lurgan Park’

The final lecture of our 2021/2022 lecture series, exploring aspects of Lurgan’s 18th century, took place on Wednesday 9 November 2022 at Brownlow House. The talk, entitled ‘The Origins and the Development of the Brownlow Demesne and Lurgan Park’, was given by Vandra Costello Dyke, a landscape historian and author of the book Irish Demesne Landscapes, 1660-1740.

In her presentation she provided an insight into the development of the formal landscaping of the Brownlow family’s demesne, which was attached to their grand manor house; from it’s beginnings in the late 17th century through to the 19th century, before the land was transformed into a public park. The talk examined the people behind the formal landscaping of the demesne, the influences that affected them, and the uses of landscape interventions which can still be witnessed today in Lurgan Park.

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