Terence Dooley begins one chapter of his book Burning the Big House: The Story of the Irish County House in a Time of War and Revolution with this quotation from a member of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy:
The Big Houses were already on their way out. The Land Wars in Ireland in the previous century had driven many English aristocrats back home. Then the Great War quite literally killed many of the would-be heirs of these estates. If that hadn’t been enough reason to close up the castles and old estates, an intentional plan to liquidate this landed aristocracy via taxation by the government was calibrated by Prime Minister Lloyd George to destroy the survivors. But some of the more radical elements of the IRA also just kicked out the Big House residents, as potent symbols of colonial expropriation, and burned their places down.
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