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Ghost Developments on Film: An experimental ethnographic exploration of place and space in post -Celtic Tiger Ireland Patrick Baxter A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Manchester Metropolitan University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy MIRIAD Manchester School of Art Manchester Metropolitan University 2017 Contents ii. Abstract iii. Acknowledgements 1. Introduction: Longford as Place, Ghost Developments as Space 2. Prologue 11. Chapter 1: A Lesser Written History of Longford 13. Economics, Estates, Geographies & Demographics 16. Placing Longford’s Historical Identity 19. The Celtic Tiger Years and Local Media 24. Chapter 2: Living among Ghost Developments 25. An Exemplary Ghost 28. The Ghost Estate Narrative 34. Art, Aesthetics and Ghost Spaces 45. The Aesthetics of Ruination 45. Ghost Developments as Sensual, Affective Space 50. Chapter 3: Place, Space & Identity: an ethnography of post-Celtic Tiger Longford 52. An Urban or a Rural Place? 61. The Changing Social Dynamics of post-Celtic Tiger Longford 78. Uses of Space: People & Practices 87. Chapter 4: ‘A Place Where Ghosts Dwell’ 88. Film & Representing ‘Irishness’ 93. A Space between Ethnographic Film & the Essay-film 101. Reading ‘A Place Where Ghosts Dwell’ 112. Conclusion: Fade Out in a Ghost Development 114. Epilogue 117. Bibliography 125. Filmography 126. Useful Web Resources i Abstract Figure 1 Speculation (Patrick Baxter) How can film and social research be used to interrogate the relationship between a marginalized place and its vacant spaces - what I refer to as Ghost Developments? This research project investigated aspects of the post-Celtic Tiger Ireland newly built environment through the production of an experimental ethnographic documentary film and an accompanying scholarly text. In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, the Republic of Ireland experienced one of the most dramatic property market collapses in recorded history, resulting large swathes of vacant and/or unfinished housing and commercial property throughout the country. My hometown and county Longford was one of the places that suffered disproportionally as a site of what became known as ‘ghost estates’ - unfinished housing estates, though it should be noted there remained a paucity of social or artistic research into vacant commercial property. In my research I have expanded on the popular term ‘ghost estate’ to arrive at ‘ghost developments’ as a new conceptualization within ruin studies that seeks to explore the aesthetic, artistic, historical, relational, material and experiential qualities of a range of ruined spaces in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, and furthermore what they can tell us about the social dynamics of place. I use the ‘ghost development’ conceptualization as a social and filmic device that not only questions how vacant space has been represented in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, but furthermore to propose the idea that through these spaces we can begin to think of the categories of urban/rural/suburban not solely as spatial delineations but as sets of social practices which are negotiated differently depending on social setting or location. My film A Place Where Ghosts Dwell employs a number of different styles, film modes and techniques to narratively tease out the spaces between ethnographic film and the essay-film to create an artistic film that is subjective and intersubjective, stylized and socially contextualized. As an experimental ethnography, this project (text and film) is both artistic and social research. ii Acknowledgements This research project has been an extraordinary personal, professional and artistic journey, and there are a number of individuals, organizations and institutes who have helped me greatly along the way, and who I would like to offer my dearest and most profound thanks. Firstly, I would like to thank and commend my academic director of studies at Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art & Design (MIRIAD), Dr Amanda Ravetz, for her committed guidance of this at times complex and arduous research project. Amanda’s insights and direction were aided and supplemented by a superb supervisory team which consisted of Fionna Barber, Dr Tim Edensor and Jenny Holt. Each member of the supervisory team brought their own knowledge and expertise to the table allowing for an interdisciplinary approach to the research in which each area of investigation was balanced thanks to an always rigorous team and supervisory process. I am greatly indebted to all staff and students at MIRIAD, and would like to particularly thank Prof Jim Aulich and Dr Myna Trustram for supporting me with academic needs. This project was made possible through a studentship provided by Manchester School of Art through MIRIAD and I am hugely grateful for the space and freedom that this bursary allowed me to carry out my research and to film to a high standard. Here I would also like to acknowledge the help and support I received from the staff at the Digital Media Bar, particularly Ben Hudson and Leighton Moody for their time and patience considering many of the technical software issues we encountered in constructing such an ambitious film project. The fieldwork and filming of this project in Longford was a life changing experience. I am forever indebted to many of the great people and organizations I worked with there - I acknowledge all these in the end credits of my film, however I would again like to thank Longford LGBT for providing me with such an outlet in my hometown. I am forever indebted to Prof Cian O’Callaghan , Paul Marsden, John Connell, Donal McAodh, Martin Morris and, of course, Shane Crossan for their support and insights into Longford and ghost developments. I would also like to thank Deirdre O’Bryne for taking on my project with such vigour and skill. Finally, I could not have an acknowledgements page without thanking my mother Betty Baxter for her patience not only throughout this project but throughout my life, and I can assure you that is no small task. This project is dedicated to my late father Jack Baxter and to my son Fionn Boyce Baxter. * Please view the film through Espace depository prior to the final section of chapter 4. iii Introduction Longford as Place, Ghost Developments as Space Figure 2 Ruined Apart-Hotel at Carrigglas Ghost Development (Patrick Baxter) 1 Prologue 5 km from Longford Town you encounter the crumbling manor walls of Carrigglas Demense, ‘Dangerous Structure’ and ‘Private Property: No Trespassing’ signs abound. There are several access points to the estate and development. On this day, I choose to venture in at a piece of collapsed wall on the West facing Allenagh Road parameter of the demesne. Access is unconvincingly barricaded by some 6ft fencing, negotiating past this security measure with heavy equipment is unproblematic. Wandering south away from the unfinished ‘village’ development on a path through the beech and ash tree woodlands, majestic in their autumn colours, I stumble upon a startling structure at the edge of a clearing in the woods. I had visited this site many times, how had I not noticed this building before? A two-storey shell without a roof on the upper floor, it resembled something one would see in coffee books brimful of photographs of World War II abandoned Soviet bunkers. Inside there are approximately 58 small rooms on either side of a 300 metres or so incrementally curving corridor. Various objects (bed frames, fire extinguishers, spirit levels, thick black rubber gloves) lay strewn haphazardly on the floor. They compete for space with shattered glass and ceramics scattered aggressively from the vandalized bathroom units sat in the left corners of these deceptively small otherwise unadorned rooms. Upstairs the recent heavy rains have filled the baths to the brim with rainwater, as if some absent presence had prepared themselves a soak and then been detracted by a pressing phone call or Facebook interaction. The sound of raindrops and rainwater tapping and flowing through the structures gives an unsettling sense of movement in a motionless place, the screech of a flight of crows overhead animate this otherwise lifeless space. Is this an apartment block? Surely not, the rooms are too small. If it is a hotel, then where is planned space for reception or a bar/lounge/restaurant? Mounting the camera on a tripod, positioning a sound recorder in key sonic spots, and looking through the lens does not extricate oneself from the unnerving qualities of the surroundings. This is very much a feature of the experience of Carrigglas estate and development, a sense of foreboding, and an unseen presence felt lurking through these incongruous edifices. There is a local rumour that one hears from time to time that the once illustrious proprietor of the estate, Sir Thomas Langley LeFroy, murdered a young peasant stable boy caught in a petty act of larceny. Odd how after two centuries this rumour still persists as local legend, however it does add to the uncanny atmosphere one encounters; it’s hard to shake the sense that the ghost of that young boy wanders here. For contained within the demesne walls are many of the spectres of Ireland’s and Longford’s troubled history - figures of renown and disrepute, struggles for land and liberation, all the discontinuities and continuities of Ireland’s social, political and economic past. Carrigglas transcends its own physical geography too, trajectories linking it to key moments in history overseas. The estate was originally the grounds of the Bishop of Ardagh, and passed into the hands of Trinity College as a result of usurpation during the Penal Law era. It was acquired in the late 18th Century by the Newcomens, a banking family, Sir Thomas Gleadowe-Newcomen lost his considerable fortune by heavily investing in pre-revolutionary France. A story goes that he gave his mistress a cheque to buy clothes, to which she added a number of zeros thus bankrupting him.

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