A Delightful and Unspoiled Treat



‘The cathedral has neither grandeur nor architectural sophistication, but it retains a strong medieval atmosphere. Peering up out of the hollow in which it was built, it presents a stern and frowning countenance, as if looking at its visitors suspiciously and defensively, blinking with surprise that anyone should want to pay it a visit. The casual visitor will be equally surprised. St Laserian’s Cathedral is hidden away down so many twisting lanes that the likelihood of a chance visit is remote. The interested visitor will have to make a determined effort to get here, and the effort will be well rewarded.’
From The Cathedrals of Ireland by Peter Galloway (Belfast, 1992) 





Once an important urban settlement (until 1801 sending two members to the Irish House of Commons) Old Leighlin, County Carlow is now a small village, rather overshadowed by its neighbours on the other side of the river Barrow, Leighlinbridge and Bagenalstown. The best evidence of its former significance is a cathedral dedicated to Saint Laserian, although he was not responsible for establishing the original religious foundation here. That role went to Saint Gobhan, who in 633 participated in a synod here to debate the timing of Easter. Another participant in this synod was St Laserian, who is believed to have advocated that the Irish Church abandon its own method of calculating when Easter should fall and instead follow that of Rome. Otherwise known as Molaise, Laserian subsequently became the abbot of a monastery at Leighlin, but not before he had visited Rome and been consecrated a bishop by Pope Honorius I, which explains why this village should have become an episcopal seat (it was established as one of the five dioceses of Leinster at the Synod of Ráth Breasail in 1111) . Meanwhile, at Leighlin, the monastery flourished and at one point is said to have had a community of some 1,500 monks. This explains why it was raided twice by the Vikings, in 859 and 916, before being totally destroyed by fire in 1060. What can be seen there today all dates from after that catastrophe.  




Work on the present St Laserian’s was begun during the episcopacy of Bishop Donatus (1152-81) and was completed by the end of the 13th century. Sitting stocky and low, as though trying not to be seen, this is one of Ireland’s smallest cathedrals, consisting of an aisleless 82 foot long nave and 59 foot long chancel with a 59 foot tall 16th century tower between them. Two transepts were added in the 13th century but that to the south has long since been demolished while that to the north is now roofless. A very substantial Lady Chapel, almost as long as the chancel, was added immediately to the north of the latter by Bishop Matthew Sanders in the first half of the 16th century. With its plain plastered walls, the nave is barnlike, there being no windows on either north or south sides, and only a small window above the west door, although the addition of several skylights in the roof has made it less dark than must once have been the case. The chancel has walls stripped of plaster and two large windows of three lights at the eastern end of the south wall. Below these is a four-seat sedilia with trefoil heads and shafts. The four-light east window has stained glass by Catherine Amelia O’Brien, a member of An Túr Gloine. Otherwise, the interior is notable for the number of memorials, some 32, all to members of the Vigors family, the first of whom to settle in Ireland, the Rev Louis Vigors, was a Church of Ireland rector in County Cork. His grandson, Bartholomew Vigors, served as Bishop of Ferns and Leighlin for 30 years (1691-1721): his chair can still be found in the chancel. Descendants of the bishop continued to live in the area for the next couple of hundred years, as their memorials scattered throughout the cathedral can testify. As Peter Galloway noted, St Laserian’s is not notable for its architecture or monuments, but instead this ancient place of worship is ‘a delightful and unspoiled treat, grey and bluff and with all the atmosphere of a 13th-century fortress church.’



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New and Old



Wallstown Castle, County Cork is thought to date from c.1780 when constructed by the Ruddock family, although the battlements were only added in the middle of the following century. The building owes its name to the Walls who occupied the site during the Middle Ages and lived in a three-story tower house, the remains of which can be seen in the yard behind the more modern castle. In 1642, during the Confederate Wars, Wallstown was captured by Lord Inchiquin in 1642 and most of its occupants killed: Richard Wall was captured and in due course died in Cork prison. The property was then granted to Captain Andrew Ruddock, whose descendants in due course opted for a more convenient residence.



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As Healthy and Convenient as Any Other Rooms


‘Don’t give the servant’s room the look of a perpetual rummage sale by making it a dumping ground for old defaced pictures, furniture, and bric-a-brac. Remember that it is her only haven of rest, and have it restful, if only for selfish reasons, for renewed bodily vigor means well-done work and a made-over disposition. When we think of the average servant’s room, small, stuffy, poorly ventilated, hot in summer, cold in winter, and unattractive to a degree, it ought to bring a blush of shame.’
Excerpt from The Complete Home (1879)





‘The servants’ rooms should be made as healthy and convenient as any other rooms in the house, well lighted, and, being in part in the roof, care should be taken in all new houses to protect them from undue heat and cold by means of boarding and slates, by overlaying the former with battens, on which the slates are hung, so that, as far as practicable, the rooms may not be rendered hot and close in summer, or icy cold in winter.’ Excerpt from Popular Science Monthly (1885)





‘The writer would here urge every mistress of a family, who keeps more than one domestic, to provide them with single beds, that they may not be obliged to sleep with all the changing domestics, who come and go so often. Where the room is too small for two beds, a narrow trucklebed under another, will answer. Domestics should be furnished with wahing conveniences in their chambers, and be encouraged to keep their persons and rooms neat and in order.’ (Excerpt from A Treatise on Domestic Economy by Catherine Esther Beecher (1845)


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Wanting Repair




In the past, the Irish Aesthete has come across several examples of late-mediaeval cylindrical tower houses, which seem to have been constructed only in Counties Kilkenny and Tipperary. From the latter county, this one can be found in Ballysheedy (sometimes Ballysheeda). Thought to date from the late 15th century, it seems originally to have belonged to the O’Dwyers, who were the dominant family in this area, the barony of Kilnamanagh Lower. Of five storeys, the building was recorded in 1607 as being in the possession of John O’Dwyer of Dundrum, deputy chief of the Dwyer clan. In the Down Survey of the mid-1650s, it is described as ‘the small castle of Ballysida wanting repair.’ Such remains the case today.


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Benefitting from Attention


‘”Grey Lambert,” as he was called, had taken up his abode in a corner of the castle under whose shadow they stood the lonely castle of Coolhull – and no entreaty could induce him to leave. He was a singular, but a fine looking person; wore neither hat nor cap; never cut either his beard or hair, which were purely, perfectly white, and flowed over his shoulders, and down his breast, even below a leather girdle that encircled his coarse frieze wrapping coat; his feet were bare; his forehead high and bald; his dress clean, betokening singularity, but not poverty; and he had been a traveller in his youth-a sailor-a soldier -some said a pirate; but that, I firmly assert, never could have been the case, for Lambert was the gentlest of old men; children and animals (who seem to have an instinctive dread of bad people) all loved him; and on Sunday evenings the village urchins, and their little cur dogs, visited him in his castle, or sat at his feet on the green sward, while he recounted tales and adventures of other lands. ‘
Extract from Sketches of Irish Character by Mrs S C Hall (London, 1829)





Relatively little is known about what Mrs Hall described as ‘the lonely castle of Coolhull’ in County Wexford. It is believed to date from the 16th century when constructed by the Devereux family, whose Norman forebears, originally from Évreux in France, had come to Ireland with Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, otherwise known as Strongbow, and been granted lands by him in this part of the country where they remained prominent and built a number of castles before losing much of their property in the mid-17th century following the Cromwellian settlements. Unlike elsewhere, there does not appear to have been a castle on this site before the 16th century when the Devereuxes acquired the land on which it stands. The first Ordnance Survey of 1840 markted the castle as a roofed building, and a drawing made by William Frederick Wakeman for the OF service during this period shows it to have been thatched. However, it would appear that the castle then ceased to be a residence, a farmhouse being built close by and the older structure given over to agricultural purposes. Handed over to the Irish State in the 1970s, it has undergone considerable restoration in recent years.





Coolhull Castle is rather unusual in design, comprising a four-storey tower at the west end attached to a three-storey fortified long house. Tower houses sometimes had such a building added to them at a later date, but this is all of the same period, a uniformity being given to the structure by having the same stepped crenellations along the roofline. The whole building constructed of local granite, for defensive reasons it had only one entrance, found on the north wall of the tower. Once inside, a door to the left provides access to the house while a newel staircase immediately ahead rises anti-clockwise to the upper floors of both the tower and the fortified house. Inside the former, each level is thought to have held a garderobe and bedroom. Meanwhile, the house contained cellars and storage areas on the ground floor, with the main living space, the hall, was on the floor above, along with the most important bedroom, each of which had its own fireplace; surviving granite corbels indicate that the ceilings in these spaces were not as high as would have been the case in earlier periods, but the window openings were larger, permitting more light to enter. The windows on the uppermost floor are noticeably smaller and fewer, and there are no fireplaces, suggesting that this was where the family’s retainers lived. According to the late Sean Rothery, there are some 130 castles in County Wexford, but Coolhull is quite unlike most of them and it is therefore wonderful to see that its fabric has been given necessary attention.


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What Survives




The mid-13th century porch of St Lachtain’s church in Freshford, County Kilkenny. It is believed that the saint after whom this was named established a monastery here at some date prior to his death in 672, but in the aftermath of the Reformation, the church fell into a poor condition, undergoing extensive renovation in 1731 and again in the mid-19th century. As a result, the sandstone porch at the west end is the only part of the mediaeval monastery to survive. It comprises four orders of ornamented arches, the inner one, the plainest, containing a dedicatory inscription in Old Irish: ‘Or do Gilla-Mocholmoc u Ce[nn]cucain do rigne. Or do Neim ingin Cuirc acus do Mathgamain u Chiarmeic lasndernad in tempul-sa’ (Pray for Gilla Mocholmoc O Cennucain who made it. Pray for Neim [Niamh], daughter of Curc and for Mathgamain O Chiarmeic, for whom this church was made.) As is often the case, the outer order, separated from the other three by a shallow barrel vault, is the most elaborate, separated from the rest by a shallow barrel vault and carved with a step pattern and zoomorphic masks. On the west face are two figurative panels, one depicting a rider figure, the other two ecclesiastics. These, together with a third figurative panel set into the jamb of the inner order, do not appear to be in their original locations and may have been arranged when the church was rebuilt in the 18th century. The upper part of the porch is 19th century.




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Hunting for a House


Irish readers over a certain age may remember the name Molly Cusack-Smith, since her colourful exploits (and sometimes language) often appeared in newspapers during the closing decades of the last century. Lady Cusack-Smith was a descendant of the Revd John O’Rorke, a Church of Ireland clergyman and member of an ancient Irish family which had once been based in what is now County Leitrim, where they had claimed the title Prince of Breifne. The Rev. O’Rorke had begun his ecclesiastical career as curate of Moylough, Co Galway, later becoming Rector of Foxford, Co Mayo, and Vicar of Straid, in the Diocese of Achonry, although he continued to live in Moylough (pluralism and non-residence being common features about Church of Ireland clergymen at the time). However, his primary interest appears to have been the acquisition of property, since he leased land from the Bellews of Mountbellew, County Galway and then bought the Clonbern estate in the same county from the family of the late William Beresford, Archbishop of Tuam. His landholdings also included over 1,600 acres in Co Roscommon and 217 acres in Co Westmeath. Married three times, he eventually diedin 1849 at the age of 73 after a fall from his horse. His son, Charles Dennis O’Rorke, inherited not just the Clonbern estate but also another at Bermingham, County Galway, bequeathed by his uncle John Dennis. This, in turn passed to his son, Charles Trench O’Rorke, before the greater part of the family’s landholdings, running to more than 5,000 acres, were acquired by the Irish Land Commission in 1927. Charles Trench O’Rorke had one child, a daughter christened Adela Mary, but known as Molly. 





Molly O’Rorke was born in 1905 and from an early age hunted with her father’s pack of harriers, since the family had long been associated with the local hunt known as the Galway Blazers. In the 1930s, she moved to Paris, initially with the intention of studying music but then opting for fashion, establishing herself as a couturier in London and specialising in evening dresses. At a cocktail party during the war she met Sir William Robert Dermot Cusack Smith whose family, like her own, was Irish. The couple married in 1946, had a daughter two years later but then parted ways. In a 1992 interview Molly Cusack-Smith explained ‘He was very rich and had a title. We got engaged because it seemed a good idea. But, actually, it wasn’t.’ Returning to Ireland and hunting, she became the first woman master of the Galway Blazers before founding the North Galway hunt where she was joint-master until her retirement in 1984. Every year at Bermingham House, she hosted a hunt ball once described as ‘the last clarion call of the stranded gentry’ and famous for the exuberance of all attendees: to paraphrase what was once said of the 1960s, if you could remember a Bermingham House hunt ball, you weren’t there. The tone was set by the event’s hostess, renowned for her colourful behaviour and language both on and off the hunting field. Of the various stories told about her, perhaps the best known is of the occasion when, at the end of the hunt, a groom remarked on the sweaty condition of her horse. To which she is said to have responded ‘You’d be sweaty, too, if you’d spent the past three hours between my legs.’ Molly Cusack-Smith died at the age of 92 in 1998. 





Bermingham House, the setting for all those legendary hunt balls, takes its name from the Berminghams, Barons Athenry, who once owned the land here, until their line died out with the first (and last) Earl of Louth who died in 1799. The house and estate were leased to John Irwin Dennis in the late 1830s before being bought  by him in 1851 in the Encumbered Estates’ Court. Along with 200 acres of farmland, it has now come on the market once more, with the opportunity for a new owner to host parties equal to those of the house’s former chatelaine. Dating probably from the mid-18th century, the building has a curious facade, of two storeys over basement and three bays, the latter spaced exceptionally far apart and both windows and door rather small considering the overall size: this is particularly curious because the west elevation is of four bays and the east of five. Inside, a pedimented doorcase leads from entrance to staircase hall, the latter having pretty neo-classical plasterwork in arches above doors and recessed bookcases. The main reception rooms have good late 18th century chimneypieces and are all painted in bold colours, as is the case with many Irish country houses. Naturally, given its previous predilection for hunting, there are fine stable yards to the rear. 


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A Victim of Temperance



After Monday’s examination of a fake castle in County Tipperary, here is a real one, albeit now in very poor condition, elsewhere in the same county. On the banks of the river Cromogue, Borrisoleigh Castle is a rectangular four-storey tower house, with the remains of a gable on the south-east wall and evidence of lower buildings once on the north-western side. It was constructed by a branch of the de Burgo (Burke) family, who were prominent in the area, although often under attack from their neighbours the O’Dwyers. A stone once embedded in a wall of the castle had a Latin inscription which translated as ‘Richard Bourke—Alice Hurley, Friend and foe make this marble rise. Come friend to our arms; the enemy begone.’ It has since been moved elsewhere. As for the castle, according to John O’Donovan who was employed by the Ordnance Survey in 1840, a brewery operated by the Biddulph family had been attached to the castle but by the time O’Donovan arrived, this had closed (he attributed the business’s failure to the temperance movement then being driven by the Capuchin friar Fr Theobald Mathew).



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Castles in the Air


The origins of the Royal Irish Constabulary can be traced back to July 1814 when Robert Peel, then Chief Secretary for Ireland, established the Peace Preservation Force, a rudimentary policing body intended to counter growing rural unrest around the country. The colloquial names ‘Bobby’ and ‘Peeler’ used to describe members of the police force originated during this period and were derived from Peel’s name. Sir Richard Willcocks, a former Dublin Magistrate and Special Government Magistrate, is the PPF’s first appointed Chief Magistrate and was sent to the Barony of Middlethird with a base at Cashel, County Tipperary. This part of the country includes the village of Annacarty, which lies some ten miles north-west of Cashel. Within a few years, it was experiencing disturbances occasioned by Cornwallis Maude, 3rd Viscount Hawarden whose family had a history of evicting tenants and raising rents on their estate. In 1821, he provided the land on which  a police barracks was built in Annacarty. A year later, Peel’s legislation was superseded by the Irish Constabulary Act, which established a police force in each of Ireland’s four provinces, all having their own inspector-general appointed by the Lord Lieutenant. The Constabulary (Ireland) Act of 1836 then merged those provincial forces into a single centralized body (though it did not operate in the capital, which retained its own force, the Dublin Metropolitan Police). Following its involvement in the suppression of the Fenian Rising of 186, Queen Victoria granted the organisation the prefix ‘royal’, being thereafter known until its disbandment in 1922 as the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). 






During the War of Independence (1918-21), the RIC Barracks at Annacarty was attacked on several occasions and, as a result, the resident force was supplemented by members of the Black and Tans (‘Temporary Constables’ made up largely of British ex-soldiers who were brought to Ireland in an attempt to suppress revolution). During this period, the barracks sergeant was a man called Cornelius O’Sullivan, originally from Kerry: his being from outside the area was not unusual in the RIC, since there was a concern that locals might have an excessive allegiance to the immediate locality). It appears that O’Sullivan was in contact with the IRA unit in the area, encouraging it to take the barracks. However, he was then taken away from the site by members of the British military and never seen again, presumed killed: his body has never been found. Perhaps due to its defensive design, Annacarty was one of only two RIC barracks to hold out throughout the War of Independence. Once the Following the official declaration of a truce between the British and Irish on 11th July 1921, the building was handed over to the local IRA which then occupied the building. Unfortunately, the following year it was subsequently attacked by an Anti-Treaty force and a siege of several days then took place. After the barrack’s leader was wounded and his men had run out of ammunition and supplies, in early May 1922 they were forced to surrender. The Anti-Treaty group then set fire to the place, which has stood a ruin ever since. 






Standing on high ground above and a short distance from the village, the former RIC barracks in Annacarty is of interest for a number of reasons, not least that it was one of the very first such buildings to be constructed, believed to be 1821-2. The architect is unknown, but must have been someone with an interest in historic design, since the barracks takes the form of a miniature castle, with crenellations along the roof level, an hexagonal tower on the south-west corner (note the gun loop on one of its sides) and a bartizan on the north wall. There’s also an unusual cross pommy-shaped gun loop on the second floor of the west wall, further indicating a knowledge of mediaeval architecture. The large arched openings on both ground and first floor soften the otherwise aggressive appearance of the barracks, but overall its form is indicative of the need at the time it was commissioned for a police barracks capable of withstanding attack: most later RIC barracks were altogether more domestic in character and quite often stood within the local town, rather than apart from it. While the interior of the building has now gone, the sturdiness of its construction means the barracks continues to provide an observation point for activity in the immediate area. A fascinating survivor.


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Split Pairs



Above are the stone gate piers at the entrance to Kilmacroom, County Cork. Below are the gate piers at the entrance to Hazelwood, which lies a mile or so away from the first property, both being houses owned by members of the Lysaght family. Seemingly, the two lions once stood guard on either side of the entrance to another Lysaght property in this part of the country called Mount North (since demolished), but they were then lost in a game of poker to the Longfields of Longueville, who later installed them at another of their estates, Waterloo. The lions were subsequently retrieved by the Lysaghts but being undecided which of their houses they should adorn, a compromise was reached by placing one lion on the pier of each entrance, with obelisks crowning the other side.



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