DETAILS
Tuesday 29th September at 8:00pm (Melbourne AEST), 11:00am (Dublin IST)
Dr Philip Bull, La Trobe University
Virginia Richards-Orpen and the Hitler Youth: An unusual Irish-German story
The Edward Richards-Orpen Memorial Trust Annual Online Lecture
Hosted by the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Homes and Estates
ABSTRACT
This lecture will explore the life of Virginia Richards-Orpen, who was born in 1916, and grew up at Monksgrange, the family ancestral home in Co. Wexford. Her intellectual qualities saw her going to Oxford where she immersed herself in studies for a language’s degree, the recreational opportunities of college life and a significant involvement in German-related activities.
SPEAKER
Dr Philip Bull, Adjunct Professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne, is an historian of Irish and British political history of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Between 2008 and 2019, as archivist of Monksgrange in County Wexford, he organised, catalogued and described the very large collection of papers held there. This work was undertaken under the auspices of the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates at Maynooth University. Based on this work he published Monksgrange: Portrait of an Irish house and family, 1769–1969 (Four Courts Press, 2019). He is currently working on the life of Joachim Benemann, a German who had an association with Monksgrange in the late 1930s. Philip Bull also continues his research and writing on his long-term interest in the Irish land question, most recently contributing a chapter to Land Reform and Legislation in Ireland, 1800-2024, edited by Terence Dooley, Annie Tindley and Tony McCarthy (Four Courts Press, 2024)
About the Trust
The Edward Richards-Orpen Memorial Trust, a charitable body registered with the Charities Regulatory Authority, was established in 1968 “for the advancement of education and research in the field of agricultural science in the Republic of Ireland with power to apply the same as the Trustees shall from time to time decide.” Between 1969 and 1984, lectures were commissioned from agricultural scientists primarily involved in grassland research, this being a particular area of interest of Richards-Orpen who had been President of the Irish Grassland Association and an essential enabler in the State’s 1946 purchase of Johnstown Castle as an agricultural research institute. The Trust was inactive from 1984 until the Monksgrange Archive was gifted to the Trust in 2017. Since then, the memorial trust’s annual lecture has focused on revealing the historical record of the Richards and Orpen families, principally through the agency of Dr. Philip Bull and his 2019 publication Monksgrange – Portrait of an Irish house and family, 1769-1969. The Trustees have been gratified with the encouragement and support of the Monksgrange Archive Project within the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates, Department of History, Maynooth University. The University has been granted the right to nominate a Trustee to the board of the trust.
LOCATION (Online)
This online lecture (Microsoft Teams) is free but registration on Eventbrite is necessary to secure a link to the talk.
RECORDING
A recording of this talk will be made available on the Monksgrange website.
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