Town & country: perspectives from the Irish Historic Towns Atlas

The interconnection between town and country is the central theme in this new volume. It is based on a seminar held in 2021 where contributors used and compared historic town atlases to understand how the urban landscape interacted with its suburban surroundings and rural hinterland through time. Four essays focus on Ireland, looking at the enduring and complex relationships between the urban and the rural from monastic times through to the nineteenth century. More broadly, an introduction (by Michael Potterton) gives the international context and a concluding essay (by Chris Dyer) discusses the study of town and country as two very complementary fields of research. Town and country is dedicated to the historical geographer and renowned cartographic historian, J.H. Andrews, who died in 2019. It includes Andrews’s seminal essay on the topographical development of the town of Kildare, from the first publication of the Irish atlas series in 1986, alongside essays on his life’s work and a bibliography of his extensive writings. The book is full colour and illustrated with over 60 maps and images. For further information on IHTA research programme, go to www.ihta.ie.