Down on the Farm


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.


2 comments on “Down on the Farm

  1. Hibernophile says:

    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.

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