Programme One – Centres of Power
Sunday May 11th 2025, RTÉ One, 6.30pm
The National Historic Properties portfolio is one of the most interesting property portfolios in Ireland.
Owned by the State, and managed by the Office of Public Works, it’s a fascinating and diverse collection of castles, country houses, memorial sites and gardens, consisting of thirty two historic properties that are open to the public.
Many of these properties were given to the State as gifts, some were bought by the State, and others, including Áras an Uachtaráin and Dublin Castle, came into the State’s possession when Ireland gained independence in 1922.
LEGACY is a new, four part documentary series for RTÉ featuring 15 of the National Historic Properties, with each episode having a specific theme: Centres of Power, Writers and Collectors, Memory and Commemoration, and The Art of the Portrait.
Writer and director of LEGACY David Hare, who wrote and directed Great Lighthouses of Ireland, explains:
“The traditional way to approach this subject would be chronologically or geographically, but instead we’ve done so thematically. The thematic approach enabled us to include very different and seemingly unrelated buildings and sites from very different eras, and weave them together so that the connections between them become clear.”
Episode One: Centres of Power
This first episode features four properties, each one a centre of power. Dublin Castle was for centuries the epicentre of English and then British rule in Ireland. At the formation of the State, debate raged about whether or not to keep the symbols of the old regime, such as the crown, the throne and the portraits of the Viceroys. The symbols were kept, and Dublin Castle remains the location for important state events and Presidential inaugurations.
Former President and contributor Professor Mary McAleese says: “I hadn’t anticipated that the historic resonance of the Castle and its story would impact me on the day of my first inauguration just as deeply as it did.
“You know, to see all the great and the good gathered there. But to know that among them there were people from a very different tradition from me, whose view of that history probably is very different from mine”.
Oldbridge House, located beside the River Boyne, stands on the site where the largest battle ever to take place on Irish soil was fought in 1690. The blood-soaked Battle of the Boyne resulted in the power to rule Ireland passing from Catholic King James to Protestant King William with profound and long-lasting consequences.
The Estate was bought by the State in 2000 following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, in which the Irish Government agreed to honour the history of all traditions in Ireland. The house was opened to the public in 2008.
Derrynane House in County Kerry is almost as far from Dublin as it’s possible to be within the country. It is the ancestral home of lawyer, politician and statesman, Daniel O’Connell, known worldwide as The Great Liberator, and whom some called the unofficial King of Ireland. O’Connell worked on his campaigns for Catholic Emancipation and for Irish freedom from British rule at Derrynane and held court there like an old Gaelic Chieftain.
His greatest triumph was achieving Catholic Emancipation in 1829, giving Catholics the right to sit in Parliament.
After O’Connell’s death, the house remained the O’Connell family home until, in 1948, the Derrynane Trust was founded, preserving the house as a museum and memorial to Daniel O’Connell.
In 1964, the house was transferred to the Commissioners of Public Works, and following restoration work completed in 1967, the house was officially opened by President Eamon De Valera.
This year will be the 250th anniversary of his birth.
Pearse Museum – St Enda’s Park in Rathfarnham, County Dublin is where Patrick Pearse, a teacher before he became a revolutionary and 1916 leader, set up a school designed to educate a new generation of Irish leaders for a new Ireland – in what today might be called the exercise of soft power. The relatively small number of boys who studied at the school went on to have a disproportionate amount of influence in the newly created State, on both sides of the bitter civil war. His mother Margaret stated in her will that following the death of her daughter, Senator Margaret Pearse, St Enda’s would be given to the Irish nation and kept as a memorial to her sons Patrick and Willie who were executed in 1916. St. Enda’s was presented to the nation in 1970.
For 900 years Britain sought to dominate Ireland from Dublin Castle.
At Oldbridge more than 300 years ago, power was bloodily transferred from a Catholic to a Protestant monarch with far reaching consequences for Ireland and Great Britain.
From their power bases in Derrynane and Rathfarnham, using very different methods and separated by almost a century, Daniel O’Connell and Patrick Pearse fought back against British rule.
These varied and remarkable sites bring the legacy of the past to life.
LEGACY is produced and directed by David Hare for InProductionTV and made with the support of the Office of Public Works
Press enquiries:
TVPR: Pauline Cronin 087 2629967