The principal aim of this thesis is to examine the attitudes of the Irish state to the Big House after independence in 1922 until accession to the European Economic Community (E.E.C.) in 1973. State is used in this thesis to include governments, ministers, civil servants, politicians and state bodies. The term Big House will denote the country homes of landlords in Ireland, predominantly dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. ‘Big House’ will be capitalised throughout the thesis because it was the label, rather than the description, popularly used to denote country houses in Ireland. The terms Big House and country house are interchangeable and will be used throughout this thesis. Terence Dooley described how these were often imposing mansions ‘built to inspire awe in social equals and, indeed, deference in the lower social classes’. Furthermore, he pointed out that the term was also inflected with resentment as the houses were built on ‘what most tenant farmers would deem to have been confiscated land’, a claim dating back to the time of the English plantations in Ireland. Therefore, Dooley asserted that ‘above all, and particularly from the 1880s, they inspired hostility’.