This book is a much-needed record of a class of architecture that is still threatened and much of which has, alas, already fallen victim to decay and neglect. It deals with those 17th, 18th and early 19th- century houses of the middle size - neither the seats of the mighty, nor the simple vernacular buildings of the rural tradition - which were occupied by what one would nowadays call the middle class; minor gentry, prosperous farmers, manufacturers and traders.

Maurice Craig's book is a remarkable work of scholarship which analyses the design and layout of over one hundred of these houses, piecing together the evidence of how and when they were constructed.

MAURICE CRAIG was born in Belfast in 1919 and educated at Dublin, Shrewsbury, Cambridge and again in Dublin. His published books include a book of poems Some Way for Reason; a biography The Volunteer Earl; an architectural history of Dublin, Dublin; a book on Irish Bookbindings and The Personality of Leinster.