The Subject of Dispute


In the early 1670s, an unseemly dispute broke out between members of the Franciscan and Dominican orders over which of them were entitled to occupy a priory in Carlingford, County Louth. Following appeals by both sides to Pope Clement X, Oliver Plunkett, then Roman Catholic Primate of Ireland, was required to settle the matter and in July 1671, following a visitation to the site, he wrote the the Papal Internuncio, ‘I find that the monastery formerly belonged to the Dominicans and that they had a convent there, the walls of which are still standing. But the Franciscans argue that for many years, and almost within the memory of man, the Dominicans were not permanently in these convents, that therefore they must be considered as abandoned, and that a prescription now exists in favour of the Franciscans. The Dominicans answer that during persecution prescription is of no avail.’ Following further consultations, Plunkett decreed in favour of the Dominicans, declaring that they had produced the authority of Ware [the historian Sir James Ware, ironically a Protestant], who says that the convent of Carlingford, under the patronage of the Earl of Ulster, belongs to the Dominicans. They, moreover, produced an instrument of the 10th year of Henry VIII, by which a citizen of Carlingford named Mariman made over a house and garden to the Dominicans of the convent of Carlingford. Again in the Dublin Register, called Defective Titles, mention is made of this convent, and they also adduced the evidence of old persons who had seen Dominicans residing near the convent before the reign of Cromwell.’ Nevertheless, the Franciscans refused to relinquish their claim, and it was not until 1678 that the matter was finally settled when Clement’s successor, Innocent XI, issued a Papal decree ordering that the Dominicans be left peacefully in the monastery.




Carlingford Priory is traditionally said to owe its origins to Richard Óg de Burgh, 2nd Earl of Ulster, who in 1305 invited the Dominican Order to settle in a site within the town. On the other hand, the Irish Historic Towns Atlas records, however, that the Dominican priory was endowed by the merchants of Carlingford in 1352. Whatever the truth, it certainly thrived although, having initially stood within the town walls, following a decline in population during the mid-14th century as a result of the Black Death, the buildings came to lie immediately outside Carlingford to the south. Dedicated to St Malachy, like so many other religious establishments in Ireland, the priory was fortified during the 15th century, as a result of almost constant warfare between different familial alliances. In 1540, when the priory was surveyed as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, it was described as a ‘strong mansion in need of no expenditure on repairs’ and being on ‘every side strongly fortified.’ In 1552, the property, along with others formerly held by religious orders in Newry, was granted by the English crown to Sir Nicholas Bagenal, Marshall of the Army in Ireland. How long he and his descendants held the former priory is open to question since by 1613 a number of Franciscan friars were in residence, hence their later altercation with the Dominicans over which order was entitled to be there. The latter may have won that fight but they do not appear to have lingered too long in the priory, described by a visitor in 1703 as being an old chapel and monastery in ruins and in 1726 the place was ‘defaced’ by William Stannus, then in the process of constructing Ghan House to the immediate north. In 1767 the Dominican friars moved to Dundalk, which remained their base thereafter. Meanwhile, over the next couple of centuries parts of the old friary came to serve various purposes: as a base for local herring fishermen, as a barracks and as a handball alley. 




Today, what remains of the Dominican Priory of St Malachy is the church, a tall and narrow shell being 125 feet long and 22 feet wide. Like so many others, the roofless building is divided into two sections of nave and chancel, the transition from one to another marked by a bell tower which was added in the 15th century. This was likely when the west wall of the building was crenellated, with a square turret at each corner and between them a machicolation resting on corbels. Between this and the small door is evidence of a blocked-up round arched window. The same is true for many of the openings on the north and south sides of the building. Where windows remain, they have lost everything but their outline; this is especially evident at the east end, which was once almost filled by a great arched window some 15 feet wide. Nothing of great consequence survives of the conventual buildings which would have stood to the immediate south of the church, with a cloister off which would have opened a number of spaces including refectory, kitchen and dormitories. All now gone, with just the gable end of a now-lost building, perhaps added during the Bagenal period of occupation and attached to what looks like the lower part of a tower house.. A short distance to the east are scant remains of a water-mill, and what may have been a fish-pond. Hard to believe that this spot was once the subject of fierce dispute between two religious orders.

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Clients of God



Díseart Aonghasa, or Dísert Óengusa, was founded in 780 by Saint Óengus of Tallaght. The monastery was associated with the Céile Dé or Culdees (meaning client of God), an early Christian ascetic movement. Today the site comprises the remains of a multi-period church, a round tower and a graveyard, all originally surrounded by a stone enclosure. Much altered over the centuries, the first of these was used as a parish church until 1418, while the graveyard ceased to be used after 1868. Although now incomplete and missing its conical cap, the limestone round tower still rises 20.65 metres and five storeys. Dating from the 11th/12th centuries, it has three windows as well as a doorway on the first level with carved sandstone used for their dressings.



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King John was not a Good Man


‘King John was not a good man –
He had his little ways.
And sometimes no one spoke to him
For days and days and days…’
From King John’s Christmas by A.A. Milne

Historic buildings tend to attract myths, as anyone who has consulted the Dúchas national folklore collection can confirm. As an example, the number of properties in Ireland which Oliver Cromwell is held responsible for destroying would have required him to spend considerably longer than the nine months he did in this country. Similarly, the construction of a large number of Anglo-Norman castles here are often attributed to King John, although he only and briefly visited Ireland twice: the first time in 1185 when, as Lord of Ireland, he failed both to strengthen the administration of his lordship and to bring Norman colonists like Hugh de Lacy under royal control. His second visit in 1210, by which time he had become King of England, was more successful but very short, lasting two months. Nevertheless, in popular memory he is held responsible for commissioning many castles around the country, including that in Athenry, County Galway, even though he never made it to this part of the island and the castle was built some 20 years after his death in 1216.




Seemingly the earliest recorded association between Athenry Castle and King John can be found in John Dunton’s Teague Land: or A Merry Ramble to the Wild Irish published in 1698. According to Dunton, ‘When King John came into Ireland to reduce some of his rebellious people here, he built the town of Athenry, and environed it with a good stone wall to be a curb upon them in those parts.’ This association with the long-deceased monarch then became embedded in local mythology and when the peripatetic German Prince Hermann von Puckler-Muskau visited Athenry in 1828, after lamenting the wretched state of the town, he wrote that ‘Here stood a rich abbey, now overgrown with ivy, the arches which once protected the sanctuary lie in fragments amid the unsheltered altars and tombstones. Further on is a castle with walls ten feet thick, in which King John held his court of justice when he came over to Ireland.’ Likewise, a decade later the historian John O’Donovan, who worked in the Topographical Department of the first Ordnance Survey decided that Athenry seems to have been built by King John in the year 1211 to put down the Hy-Briuin, Hy-many and Hy-Fiachrach Aidhne, three most ferocious Connachtan tribes.’ On the other hand, the ever-reliable Samuel Lewis in his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) noted that Athenry was ‘the first town established by the De Burgos and Berminghams, the Anglo-Norman invaders of Connaught, and at a remote period was surrounded by walls, and became a place of importance.’ 




Meyler de Bermingham was the great-grandson of Robert de Bermingham, an Anglo-Norman knight who had arrived in Ireland in the early 1170s and settled in what is now County Offaly. In the 1230s, Meyler and his father Peter de Bermingham participated in the Norman invasion of Connaught. As part of this, the former built a castle by a fording point on the river Clarin at a spot known as Áth na Rí (Ford of the Kings), from which derives the name Athenry. As for the castle, set inside enclosure walls, it is a large three storey rectangular hall-keep with base-batter, with a basement that would have been used for storage, a great hall on the first floor and an attic above. The battlements date from the 13th century as do the arrowslits in the merlons. In the 15th century, these parapets were incorporated into gables at the north and south ends for a new roof. When first built, the castle’s entrance was at first-floor level, accessed via an external wooden stairs. Carvings on the exterior of the doorcase and inside two of the window openings feature floral motifs in a local style, transitional between Romanesque and Gothic and known as the ‘School of the West.’ The castle appears to have been abandoned in the 16th century and old photographs show it as a roofless ruin. However, in 1991, the Office of Public Works initiated restoration work on the site and it is now open to visitors during the spring and summer periods.


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Easily Overlooked



Some distance to the east of the main site at Clonmacnoise, County Offaly, and easily (although unwisely) overlooked, are the remains of the Nuns’ Church. This little building was built in 1167 under the patronage of Dearbhfhorghaill, wife of Tighearnan O’Rourke, King of Breifne. Famously, 15 years earlier, she had eloped with/been abducted by Dermot MacMurrough Kavanagh, an incident often deemed to have precipitated the Norman invasion of Ireland. The church later fell into disrepair, but both the entrance doorway and the chancel arch were reconstructed in the mid-19th century and are now outstanding examples of Hiberno-Romanesque design, both replete with geometric designs, along with human and animal forms on the chancel capitals. 



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A Site Lonely and Desolate


‘Adjacent to a branch of “the Bog” are the interesting ruins of Clonmacnois, the school where, according to Dr O’Conor, “the nobility of Connaught had their children educated, and which was therefore called Cluain-mac-nois, the secluded recess of the sons of nobles.” It was also, in ancient times, a famous cemetery of the Irish kings, and for many centuries it has continued a favourite burial-place, the popular belief enduring to this day, that all persons interred here pass immediately from earth to heaven. The abbey is said to have been founded by St. Kieran around the middle of the sixth century, and soon became “amazingly enriched”, so that, writes Mr Archdall, “its landed property was so great, and the number of cells and monasteries subjected to it so numerous, that almost half of Ireland was said to be within the bounds of Clonmacnois.” The ruins retain marks of exceeding splendour. In the immediate vicinity there are two “Round Towers”.’
From Ireland: Its Scenery, Character, &, by Mr & Mrs S.C. Hall, Vol. 2 (1842) 






‘We now pass the Grand Canal, and at Shannon Bridge see, on the right, the celebrated ruins of Clonmacnoise, the most recent description of which is given by Dr. Rodenburg, as follows: “Close to the shore stands Clonmacnoise, one of the most remarkable ruins in this island of the saints. The banks rise here slightly, and on the grass-clad mound stand two round towers, ruins of churches and a cemetery. On the first hillock are the sunken walls of an old ecclesiastical building; on another hill is the great round tower. The roof has disappeared, and a broad belt of ivy winds like a garland round its centre. Down in the bottom, rather further inland, is the second round tower, still perfect, and behind it, M’Dermott’s Church with its splendid round arched portal, fresh as if carved but yesterday. From the mound of the great round tower to the second the ground is covered with upright gravestones, among which stands a ruin, St Kieran’s Church, where the saint himself is said to be buried. The wonder of Clonmacnoise is St Kieran’s Stone, a cross of rare beauty, covered with sacred images. A wall surrounds the holy spot, which is to this day the scene of many pilgrimages and processions”.’
From How to Spend a Month in Ireland, and What it Will Cost by Sir Cusack Patrick Roney (1861) 






‘Like most of these sites, Clonmacnoise occupies a site lonely and desolate, significant of that spirit of asceticism which was wont to exclude the world and repel its busy life. The loneliness of Glendalough is that of the secluded valley; that of Clonmacnoise of the desolate flat in the midst of a wild moorland country, over which the Bog of Allen stretches its almost interminable waste. “If ever,” says Otway, “there was a picture of grim, hideous repose, it is the flow of the Shannon from Athlone to Clonmacnoise.” Round a swampy flat of meadow the river winds in an amphitheatre, upon the southern curve of which the seven churches are erected. To obtain the best view of the group, one should ascend the green hill which rises at the northern extremity like an oasis in the desert. From this he will see the churches, the two round towers, the overhanging bastions of the old castle of O’Melaghlin, all rising, ruinous and desolate, as if out of the brown bog that stretches away southward…In the extensive churchyard most of the churches are situated, and the intervening spaces are crowded with tombs and graves ancient and modern – for it is still a favourite place of burial with the people – with inscriptions in the oldest form or Irish characters to the modern Roman and Italian letters. But perhaps the most remarkable and interesting objects are the numerous antique crosses, some of the most exquisite workmanship and richly carved with scriptural subjects.’
From Picturesque Europe: A Delineation by Pen and Pencil, by Bayard Taylor, Vol. 1 (1875)  


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School Daze


After Monday’s examination of Lisnavagh, County Carlow, here outside one of the entrance gates to the estate is a former school, thought to date from the late 1840s and perhaps designed, like so much else here, by Daniel Robertson. The building is certainly in the same Tudor-Gothic manner, with an abundance of hood mouldings over the windows and octagonal chimney stacks at either end of the main block which is centred on a two-storey gable. A work of considerable charm. 

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A Pleasant Tudor Revival House of Medium Size


While several hundred Irish country houses were destroyed during the years of the War of Independence and Civil War, many more were subsequently lost over the following decades as owners found it impossible to maintain them in the face of rising prices and falling income. The late 1940s and 1950s were a particularly bad period for these properties. As early as 1932, the Irish Times had noted that ‘the dead hand of the state lies heavily on the great houses. Depleted incomes make their maintenance difficult enough, but high taxation and death duties render the passage of a great house from father to son almost impossible.’ In her 2019 book White Elephants: The Country House and the State in Independent Ireland, 1922-73, Emer Crooke notes that a large number of houses were just abandoned, with the removal of their roofs so that residential rates would not have to be paid. Furthermore, many such buildings that were destined for demolition suddenly became valuable, ‘not as residences, but as commodities. Houses were bought up for demolition by speculators interested in selling off valuable slates or lead from their roofs, while the Land Commission also demolished some houses on acquired lands, from which they could use the materials to build factories, roads and so on. Big Houses had become far more valuable and useful for their parts than when they were standing.’ Hence the enduring spectacle across the Irish countryside of skeletal remains, towering structures of which only the outer walls now remain. Such might have been the fate of Lisnavagh, County Carlow had its then-owners not decided on an alternative option to ensure at least part of the house continues to be a family home. 





Lisnavagh has been home to the Bunbury family since the 1660s when they moved to County Carlow as tenants of the first Duke of Ormond before purchasing the property in 1702. A plaque inside the present house shows that the original residence on the estate was built by William Bunbury in 1696. This survived for some 150 years until a new Lisnavagh was commissioned by Captain William McClintock-Bunbury who had inherited the property in 1846 following the death of his childless maternal uncle, Thomas Bunbury. Designs for a new house had been commissioned by William Bunbury from architect Oliver Grace in 1778 but following the client’s untimely death, the project was abandoned. Instead, a year after inheriting the estate, Captain McClintock-Bunbury asked Daniel Robertson to come up with a new scheme and this one went ahead. As with a number of Robertson’s other houses in this part of the country, Lisnavagh was constructed in a variant of the Tudor-Gothic style, heavily gabled and with many mullioned windows, all clad in local granite and finished for the sum of £16,000. The work took two and a half years to complete, during which time the same team of workers built new stables ,haylofts, farm buildings, a schoolhouse, several outbuildings, a walled garden, three miles of walls and a gate lodge. A contemporary report in the Farmer’s Gazette noted that ‘Every stone which was used in the various buildings — in the mansion house, the farmyards, demesne walls, and cottages — was dug out of the land, it being quite unnecessary to open a regular quarry, such was the abundance of stones in the land.’ A long, low building of two storeys, the house’s interior featured an abundance of reception and bedrooms which, by the middle of the last century were proving near-impossible to maintain. 





In September 1937 Lisnavagh was inherited by William McClintock-Bunbury, fourth Baron Rathdonnell who, ten years later and in the aftermath of the Second World War, was faced with the challenge of how to look after a very substantial house on a relatively small income. Initially he and his wife, the artist Pamela Drew, put the place up for sale: one potential purchaser was Evelyn Waugh, then travelling through Ireland in the hope of finding a home for himself and his family: he described Lisnavagh as a ‘practical Early Victorian Collegiate building.’ A buyer proving elusive, alternative solutions were sought, with Lady Rathdonnell consulting her uncle,  architect Aubyn Peart Robinson of Caroe & Partners, who suggested the house be reduced in size. Beginning in 1951, driven by the motto ‘Rejuvenate the Positive’, this is what happened. While Peart Robinson planned the operation, work was overseen by architect Alan Hope who ran a highly successful practice in Dublin. The decision was taken to keep the part of the house formerly acting as the service wing, not least because this had a basement, and to clear away the rest of the building which had hitherto held the main reception rooms. However, rather than just demolish a large chunk of Lisnavagh, the Rathdonnells had the granite stones of the western gable taken down by hand, numbered and then re-erected to create a new south-facing front. As a result of careful planning, when the project came to a conclusion in February 1954, rather than looking as though it had lost several limbs, the house gave the impression of having always had the same appearance. Outside, a porte-cochère previously only used by household staff became the main entrance, while indoors a library was created in what had been the old kitchen: in its new incarnation, this is today the finest room in the house, with carved oak shelving by Strahan & Co of Dublin, panels of Cordova leather and many family portraits. Lisnavagh might easily have joined the long sad list of lost Irish country houses but thanks to the clever initiative of its owners in the 1950s, it still stands today. Even more importantly, as Mark Bence-Jones noted in his guide to these properties (1978), ‘the surviving part of the house looks complete in itself; a pleasant Tudor Revival house of medium size rather than a rump of a larger house.’


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Decent Lodgings



The former gate lodge at Ballyhaise, County Cavan (for the main house, see Mixing the Orders « The Irish Aesthete). Thought to have been designed by William Farrell and to date from c.1840, the single-storey building stands opposite the main gates and directly above the river Annalee. It is of five bays, the three central ones being recessed behind a charming wrought-iron trellis screen. Formerly a gift shop, the lodge is currently being restored to serve as a community space and coffee shop. 



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Death of a Salesman



Until relatively recently, across Ireland every country town would have had an hotel. It was the place where local weddings and similar social gatherings might be held, as well serving as a venue for business meetings, gatherings of societies like the Rotary or Lions Clubs, and occasional clandestine encounters. But what helped to sustain these hotels on a day-to-day basis, what kept the bar humming in the evening, filled bedrooms at night and ensured breakfast would be served in the morning were members of a now-vanished breed: the commercial traveller. 





Commercial travellers, otherwise known as travelling salesmen, were once a common sight throughout the country. Almost incessantly on the road, they moved from one urban centre to another, seeking to persuade individuals or retail outlets to buy the products or services of the company they represented. Their numbers were sufficiently great for the Irish Commercial Travellers’ Federation to be founded in Cork in 1919; in the middle of the last century, this body was sufficiently important to have its own publication, The Traveller.
While there were a handful of products being offered for sale by women – the Avon Lady who sold cosmetics and the like – commercial travellers were overwhelmingly male, and the profession gained a reputation for being somewhat libidinous: all those men on their own with an hotel bedroom at their disposal. Timothy Lea’s saucy Confessions of a Travelling Salesman was published in 1973, and the same year saw the release of the rather lame film, Secrets of a Door-to-Door Salesman. However, the end was soon nigh for commercial travellers: tellingly, in 1981, the Irish Commercial Travellers’ Federation was absorbed into the Sales, Marketing & Administrative Union of Ireland. Various factors have been given for the decline and eventual disappearance of a once-widespread occupation. Improvements in communication and transportation made the traditional role of a travelling salesman who physically visited customers over long periods less necessary for mainstream businesses. More recently, computers, and the internet have created direct online ordering systems, thereby allowing retailers to view and order stock directly from manufacturers, and making the role of the commercial traveller redundant. In addition, the rise of large retail chains has led to a corresponding reduction in the number of independent outlets that once relied on travellers. All of which hastened the demise of the travelling salesman. 





A recent visit to two towns less than six miles apart, one on either side of the border, both of which have hotels which were once thriving but which are now empty and in poor condition. In Clones, County Monaghan, the former Lennard Arms which stands in a prominent position at the junction of MacCurtain and Analore Streets and with a bold double canted bay fronted façade facing The Diamond, dates back to 1860. According to the National Built Heritage Service, the building ‘has been an institution in Clones since it commenced trading and endures as an important landmark in the town.’ That was written in 2011, and since then the hotel has ceased trading and fallen into its present sad state. Meanwhile, over in Newtownbutler the handsome Lanesborough Arms Hotel on Main Street first opened for business in 1820 and serves as testament to the prosperity of the town at the time. Of five bays and three storeys with a free-standing Tuscan porch, it closed for business in 2004 (the interior of the adjacent pub was removed and reinstalled in the Ulster American Folk Park, County Tyrone). A fire believed to have been started deliberately caused major damage to the building in 2016 and its condition has only grown worse since then.
The Lennard and Lanesborough Arms Hotels were both the kind of premises which have once provided hospitality to commercial travellers, and one wonders whether the disappearance of this formerly reliable class of guest was a factor in their closure. Each town suffers from the blight of dereliction (see top pictures for Clones and bottom ones for Newtownbutler), providing further evidence that once-thriving urban centres in all parts of Ireland have experienced serious decline across recent decades. With the loss of their clientele, do these once-thriving hotels have a future? In Clones, plans have been announced by the local authority to renovate the Lennard Arms as a heritage centre. Alas, no such opportunities in Newtownbutler for the Lanesborough Arms which, together with many of its neighbours along Main Street, continues to stand empty and neglected.



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Taken to Court



After Monday’s exploration of Kilmainham Gaol, here is its immediate neighbour, the neo-classical ‘Sessions House’ designed by William Farrell and opened in 1820. Faced in granite, the main entrance is of two storeys and has a pedimented three-bay breakfront with arched windows on the first floor. Below, the rusticated ground floor has blind doors flanking the entrance, while on either side are single-bay outer bays with tripartite windows on the first-floor and blind equivalents below them. Inside the building, the rear section is given over to a double-height, galleried courtroom with Diocletian window above the judge’s bench. To the front is a similarly double-height entrance hall lit by the aforementioned three arched windows on the facade. 


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