{"id":189,"date":"2019-08-23T22:08:57","date_gmt":"2019-08-23T22:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/sarah-watts\/?p=189"},"modified":"2019-08-23T22:10:49","modified_gmt":"2019-08-23T22:10:49","slug":"celebration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/sarah-watts\/celebration\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I passed in my thesis this past Sunday, so on Monday I went to Westport for the day. Westport is widely touted as a picturesque village, and they aren't wrong. After a lukewarm lunch, I went to Westport House, which easily garners rave reviews:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Westport House sits on the footprint of the castle of Grace O'Malle, who was a famous pirate: Grace O'Malle hassled the English, bargained with Queen Elizabeth I, and was the namesake of one of our family cats (my favorite, and aptly named).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Highlights from the interior:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Honest-to-God medieval dungeons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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I judge fancy houses by their libraries; I dislike the ones that don't actually have books in them. This one gets a bonus because I could imagine spending time in here.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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This room is set up with the likenesses of famous Irish people (who presumably stayed in the house). I didn't linger long in this room, as the person who set it up had fun: no matter where you stand, one of them is always looking at you.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Some of the rooms were unfurnished (and thankfully sans lifelike mannequins), and had exhibits that showed the details of the people who have lived in the house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naturally, as it's Ireland, there was a room dedicated to The Famine (a fatal lack of agrobiodiversity if ever there was one) and the role of the people who lived in the house at the time: the Third Marquess of Sligo and his family. The marquess - and his wife - turned out to be better than the average landlord; while he did evict people, he only evicted the 'idle and dishonest,' and brought in shipments of food for people in need. During the 1846-47 winter, Lady Sligo told the marquess that he should provide blankets, as it was the coldest year on record in the last 100 years; in addition, the household staff was cut by half to minimize expenses, and charity functions were held to raise money for the estate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The family stood out in a landscape of disinterested landowners and a sluggish government; I don't think they did everything they could have done, but I'm sure that they saved hundreds - or perhaps thousands - of people's lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fortunately, these days the Marquess of Sligo doesn't have to worry about these matters: rather, he has to worry about making sure his daughters inherit his estate - and that no one causes a stampede by the swan boats. (I gave the swans a wide berth and escaped untrampled.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I passed in my thesis this past Sunday, so on Monday I went to Westport for the day. Westport is widely touted as a picturesque village, and they aren't wrong. After a lukewarm lunch, I went to Westport House, which easily garners rave reviews: Westport House sits on the footprint of the castle of Grace ...continue reading \"Celebration\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[117,115,116],"class_list":{"0":"post-189","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-misc","7":"tag-thesis-submission","8":"tag-westport","9":"tag-westport-house","10":"h-entry","11":"hentry","12":"h-as-article"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/sarah-watts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/sarah-watts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/sarah-watts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/sarah-watts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/sarah-watts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/sarah-watts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/sarah-watts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/sarah-watts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/sarah-watts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/sarah-watts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}