Monthly Archives: July 2014
Paper Thin
A section of the dining room wall at Strokestown Park, County Roscommon. Although the main part of the house dates from c.1730 when designed by Richard Castle, it underwent alterations and redecoration in the first decades of the following century, which is when the rose-pink damask paper was hung in this room, its patinated surface indicating the movement of pictures over the past 200 years (and the sale of some of them during the later part of this period).
The interiors of Strokestown feature in a new book Wallpaper in Ireland 1700-1900 written by David Skinner, the doyen on the subject and this country’s most skilled producer and restorer of papers. The book, itself an object of beauty, is published by the Churchill House Press with all proceeds from its sale going to the Irish Georgian Society. It also contains images of Strokestown’s library paper, some of which can be seen below. Again some two centuries old, this has a wide flock border above the dado rail which has suffered somewhat from pieces of furniture rubbing against the surface, but surely that only adds to its appeal?
You can read an article written by me and discussing David Skinner’s book in today’s Irish Times magazine. : http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/on-a-roll-wallpaper-from-great-irish-houses-1.1854262
Weighing Up Your Visitors
A page from the 1897/98 visitors’ book of Dunsandle, County Galway, one of a number of such items being sold today by auctioneer Oliver Usher in Kells, County Meath. Dunsandle itself is now a roofless ruin, although traces of its exquisite interior plasterwork somehow still remain (see Dun and Dusted, December 9th 2013). Therefore surviving remnants of life in the establishment, such as this book, are precious. Curiously visitors to the house had their weight and height taken on arrival: was this common procedure one wonders?
A Towering Presence
An example of early 19th century modernisation: the entrance front of Ballymore Castle, County Galway. The original castle, a fortified tower house, dates from around 1585 when it was built by the Elizabethan adventurer John Lawrence on land acquired through his marriage to the daughter of O’Madden, Lord of Longford: it was damaged in subsequent wars and repaired by his son Walter in 1620. The next generation of Lawrences were dispossessed by Cromwell for having espoused the royalist cause and the castle with surrounding land given to Sir Thomas Newcomen, who then leased the property back to the Lawrences. On Newcomen’s death Ballymore passed to his stepson Nicholas Cusack of Cushinstown, County Meath, who around 1720 sold it to John Eyre of Eyrecourt. By this date another family, the Seymours were already leasing the estate and they finally purchased it from Giles Eyre in the mid-1820s. Almost a decade earlier, a two-storey house was added onto the castle, as can be seen here. Its most notable feature is the central bow with its curved fanlighted doorway.