The Little Big House at Gweedore: inscribing sociality and space in north-west Ireland, 1842–1859

Abstract

The visitors' book is a neglected source for the study of travel and hotel history in Ireland. Inscriptions from the Gweedore Hotel Book from 1842 to 1859 illuminate how guests negotiated relationships with each other and with the landlord, Lord George Hill, and how they narrated spaces inside and outside the hotel on his estate in Co. Donegal. A close textual analysis reveals how the hotel was depicted as a liminal space, straddling the public and private worlds of the public hostelry and the stately Irish Big House. Acts of reading and inscription linked practices at the rural hotel to broader cultures of Victorian travel. At the same time, they also reveal local influences over the articulation of self and other on one of mid-Victorian Ireland's most famous ‘model’ estates. These layered contexts are critical to understanding the politics which surrounded the hotel book – particularly the voices it privileged, and those it suppressed.

Keywords:

• hotel history
• visitors' book
• hospitality culture
• tourism history
• travel literature
• Donegal

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the staff at Donegal County Council Archives Services, Lifford, for assistance with this project: Niamh Brennan, Frances Crampsie and Helen McNutt. Dr Eddy Rogers contributed greatly to development of this research programme as a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Guelph in 2009–2010; his assistance in developing the literature review incorporated within this study has been invaluable. Monica Finlay, an MA student, participated with Dr Rogers in archival research in May 2010. Evan Tigchelaar provided valuable editorial assistance, and Jennifer Marvin of the Data Resource Centre at the University of Guelph Library worked to create the map that accompanies this piece. Dr Alastair J. Durie has been a source of valuable feedback on this article and on the development of the wider project examining hotel history. This research is generously supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant.

Notes

1. Subsequent page references are to the Gweedore Hotel Book; as two systems of pagination are used in the book itself, this article cites the circled page numbers.