Sophia Parnell-Evans: Feminism, Politics and Farming in 19th Century Portrane

Sophia Parnell-Evans (1780-1853) ran a large and successful farming enterprise at at time when few women had done so. She met two Queens, the ex-wife of Napoleon and knew the radical feminist Margaret Mount Cashel. A friend of both the Darwin and Condorcet families, she was daughter and sister to three of the most prominent Irish politicians of her day, and wife to another. A radical thinker in her own right, Sophia founded two primary schools in Donabate and helped in no small way to mitigate the effects of the Great Famine in her locality. The memorial round tower she built in memory of her devoted husband, the MP George Evans, revived a tradition of tower building that had lain dormant for seven centuries. As the great aunt of Charles Stewart Parnell, she even made it into the pages of Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake as the practical joker greataunt Sophy .