The sadly dilapidated farmyard at Garbally Court, County Galway. The main house and yards were built by Richard Le Poer Trench, second Earl of Clancarty around 1819: thanks to his diplomatic skills at the Congress of Vienna a few years earlier, he had also been created Marquess of Heusden in the peerage of The Netherlands. Lord Clancarty’s architect for Garbally was the London-based Thomas Cundy senior: this was his only significant Irish commission. The Le Poer Trenches remained here until 1922 when the estate was sold to the Roman Catholic diocese of Clonfert for £6,750. Ever since then it has served as a boy’s secondary school.
Recent posts have aroused feelings of pensive sadness; abandoned mansions, crumbling castles, decaying churches, tumbledown farmyards. It is all a rather depressing (though thoroughly accurate) account of Ireland’s built heritage.
If I may be so bold to suggest that, perhaps, The Irish Aesthete will indulge followers with the appraisal of some structures which necessitate a response of celebration opposed to one of melancholy.
Don’t worry: cheerier posts planned for the next couple of weeks…