Monthly Archives: November 2019

The Holy Trinity Massacre


Prior to the arrival of the Normans, much of what is now eastern County Offaly was under the control of the O’Conor Faly clan. The invaders pushed them west, their lands granted to the knight Robert de Bermingham who had participated in Henry II’s expedition to Ireland in 1172. However, over the next 100 years the O’Conor Faly’s gradually returned to their former territory and in 1294 they captured Kildare Castle. By then their opponent was de Bermingham’s descendant Piers Mac Feorais, Baron of Tothemoy who in 1289 had been appointed by the crown authorities to guard the much of the frontier in Kildare. Finally in 1306 a truce was reached between him and Mac Feorais agreed to act as god-father to the nephew of Murtough O’Conor Faly, then head of the clan.


On the Feast of the Holy Trinity, 1306 the Berminghams and the O’Conor Falys gathered for the baptismal ceremony at Carrickoris church, and then adjoined for a feast at the adjacent feast. However, as the Annals of the Four Masters later recorded, ‘O’Conor Faly (Murtough), Maelmora, his kinsman, and Calvagh O’Conor, with twenty-nine of the chiefs of his people, were slain by Sir Pierce Mac Feorais Bermingham in Mac Feorais’s own castle, by means of treachery and deceit.’ The little godson meanwhile was thrown off the top of the battlements and so died. Now wonderfully peaceful, this is the site, if not the actual building, where the notorious massacre took place.

A Melancholy Gloom


‘Adjoining the castle [in Malahide, County Dublin], and embowered in a thick grove of chestnuts, that, in their leafy honours, cast a melancholy gloom upon the picture, are the roofless ruins of a venerable church, silent, sad, and solitary; its solitude, more striking from the appearance of a low and lonely tomb, standing in the centre of the temple,bearing on its surface the effigy of a female, habited in the costume of two centuries ago.’


‘She was the daughter of a Baron Plunkett, of Killeen, and in early life had been betrothed to the young Lord of Galtrim. Upon the day of celebrating the nuptials, and at the delivery of the last words of the solemn contract, the bridegroom was called away from the altar-steps to head his followers, and scatter a gathering of the Irish. Oh, vanity of earthly hopes ! in a few short hours he was borne homewards to his widowed bride,
“Stretch’d on his shield, like the steel-girt slain
By moonlight seen on the battle plain.”
This sepulchre the curious now often visit to contemplate the resting-place of one who had thus the unusual fortune “to be maid, wife, and widow in a single day.” Her fortune afterwards proved less wayward, for she lived to marry, as her third husband, Sir Richard Talbot, of Malahide.’


From The Scenery and Antiquities of Ireland by J. Stirling Coyne and N.P. Willis (1841)

Subject to Change


Few houses in Ulster have as complex a history of building, alteration and demolition as Montalto, County Down. There was likely some kind of residence on the site in the 17th century when this part of the country was still under the control of the McCartan family. However, at some point around 1650 it was either bought by or granted to George Rawdon who had moved from Yorkshire to Ireland twenty years before to manage another estate in County Antrim. Until 1775 the Rawdons’ principal abode was at Moira elsewhere in County Down; Montalto would therefore have been a secondary property. It was the settler’s great-grandson, John Rawdon, created first Earl of Moira in 1761 who decided to move to Montalto and erect the core of the house still seen today. Quite what was there before he took this decision is unclear, as is the precise date of the house’s construction; in their recently published guide to the Buildings of South County Down, Philip Smith suggests work on Montalto may have begun in the second half of the 1750s, soon after the future Lord Moira had finished erecting a splendid town house on Usher’s Island in Dublin. (Later used by the Mendicity Institution, Moira House was demolished in the 1950s, with only the gateposts into the building’s forecourt surviving.) A couple of pictures from the 1790s (one of them depicting a battle in 1798 which took place in nearby Ballynahinch) show Montalto to have a somewhat disordered exterior, suggesting that work undertaken there in the previous years had been sporadic, and based around an earlier structure. The landscape in which the house sits, not least a fish-shaped lake in front of the east-facing entrance, was also undertaken during the same period.




Following his father’s death in 1793, the second Earl of Moira (later first Marquess of Hastings), a distinguished soldier who participated in the American War of Independence and later served as Governor-General of India, inherited estates in England from his mother and therefore sold his Irish property. Montalto was bought in 1802 by a young man called David Ker whose family lived elsewhere in the county. He appears to have undertaken some alterations to the building; a contemporary description notes that he had ‘much improved the house by putting in larger windows, painting, &, &.’ More than thirty years later, Ker’s son, also called David, decided to enlarge the building. The obvious way to do this would have been to add an additional storey above those already standing. In this instance, however, the owner decided to do down rather than up. In other words, the basement was excavated to create what is now Montalto’s ground floor; something similar had been done by his father in the 1820s at the Kers’ other residence in Portavo. The considerable feat of engineering was most likely due to the involvement of a Newtownards builder/architect called Charles Campbell whose son died in 1849 ‘in consequence of a fall which he received from a scaffold whilst pinning a wall at Montalto House.’ In the 1850s David Ker made further additions by adding a two-storey ballroom extension to the rear (west) of the house, along with a new service section. The Kers sold the estate in 1910 to Arthur Vesey Meade, fifth Earl of Clanwilliam, his wife refusing to live in his family home, Gill Hall on the grounds that it was haunted.




In 1950 Lord Clanwilliam attempted to sell Montalto but was unable to find a buyer. Three years later, his son the sixth earl demolished the ballroom and mid-19th century service wing: the outline of the former can be seen delineated by a new beech hedge on the lawns behind the house. In 1979 the house and what remained of the estate was sold to a business consortium but six years later a fire further extensively damaged the building and led to further demolition, so that Montalto today is less than half the size it was a century ago. Nevertheless, it remains a substantial house and, since being acquired by the present owners in the mid-1990s, has been thoroughly restored and opened to the public for weddings and other events. And, as can be seen, the demesne has also received much attention. The house’s interior will be discussed here at a later date.

To a De Gree


The life of Flemish artist Peter de Gree appears to have been short and not especially happy. Born in Antwerp, he originally studied for holy orders but abandoned this for painting, specializing in grisaille work which led to his being noticed by banker David La Touche, as well as Sir Joshua Reynolds. When de Gree came to London in 1785 the latter provided him with fifty guineas and a letter of introduction to the fourth Duke of Rutland, then serving as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He arrived in Dublin the same year and soon began to receive commissions. However, as Strickland noted in his 1913 Dictionary of Irish Artists, ‘De Gree, although he worked hard and charged low prices for his pictures, was not very successful. He lived in two small rooms, stinting himself in order to send to his parents in Antwerp all that he could spare of his earnings. The privations he endured broke down his health, and in January 1789, he died in his house in Dame Street.’


De Gree’s first commission in Dublin was to decorate the first floor Music Room of David La Touche’s residence at 52 St Stephen’s Green with a number of panels inspired by musical themes; these remain in situ. The series of large grisaille panels shown here, featuring a number of classical gods and goddesses, as well as playful putti, were originally painted for the house next door, 51 St Stephen’s Green, built around 1760 for the M.P. George Paul Monck, but they were subsequently removed and installed in another house in County Wicklow. More recently the panels were acquired by the Office of Public Works which has its headquarters in 51 St Stephen’s Green. However, that building has undergone many changes since first constructed and so de Gree’s series of grisaille pictures have now been hung in a first floor room on the western side of Dublin Castle’s Upper Yard, one of suite recently redecorated and opened to the public.

A Short Life


All that remains of the former Church of Ireland church of St Nathlash in Rockmills, County Cork. Assisted by a grant of £800 from the Board of First Fruits, it was built in 1811 by Colonel Richard Aldworth whose main residence, Newmarket, was elsewhere in the same county but who kept a sporting lodge close to Rockmills, the latter name derived from the flour mills which Colonel Aldworth had also established in the area. Described by Samuel Lewis in 1837 as ‘a small neat structure with a tower and spire’, the church was in use for little more than 65 years. Following the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869, the parish of Rockmills was united with that of nearby Kildorrery, and in 1889 the greater part of St Nathlash’s was demolished.

Old Buildings Speak


Time knows no beginning or end
Old Buildings wave and wend,
And the words live on in the wind…




Old Barns Speak
Of braying donkey and milking cow;
Hens and ducklings, screeching and scratching
In the hay-laden, sweet-funk air.




Time knows no beginning or end
Old Buildings wave and wend,
And the words live on in the wind…


Lines from Old Buildings Speak by Marianne Reninger 

Small but Perfectly Formed


The chapel on Lambay Island, County Dublin was originally built on the site of an older ruin in 1833; at the time, the place was owned by the Talbots of Malahide Castle. At the start of the last century, the island was bought by Cecil Baring and his wife Maude, who commissioned Edwin Lutyens to renovate and extend all existing structures on Lambay, not least the late mediaeval castle. Lutyens also transformed the external appearance of the chapel into a small Doric temple (although it was, and still is, used for Christian worship, as the statue of the Virgin on the indicates. Inside the building, a stained glass window designed by Patrick Pollen in the form of a cross was later inserted.

On a Clear Day



The so-called Fleming’s Folly in County Cavan. Many fanciful stories have been spread about this little building, such as that it was constructed by local landowner Captain James Fleming so that he could see his son’s ship returning from America. More likely it is an early 19th century folly, of the kind then being constructed across the country: the building is shown on an Ordnance Survey map of 1836. Made from stone quarried locally, it is of two storeys and has the remains of a large chimney on the groundfloor; this suggests the folly served as a destination for walks by the Flemings and their guests. The building stands at the top of a hill above the village of Ballinagh and by climbing an intramural staircase it was possible in clear weather to see three of Ireland’s provinces: Ulster, Leinster and Connaught.


Religious Austerity


On a peninsula that extends like a finger dipping into the waters of Lough Conn, County Mayo stand the remains of Errew Priory. Like so many other Irish religious houses, this one is believed to have been founded by an early Christian saint. Tigernan, otherwise known as Tiernan was said to have been born in this part of the country but otherwise little appears to be known about him. He is the patron saint of nearby Crossmolina where the Roman Catholic church and secondary school are named after him.





Errew Priory was re-founded in the 12th century by the Anglo-Norman Barrett family which had settled in the area; a number of them became Bishops of Elphin (a local diocese) and one, Thomas Barrett, was buried at Errew in 1404. Ten years later, the establishment was given by the Barretts into the care of the Augustinian Canons Regular who already had a house in Crossmolina. Dedicated to the Virgin, Errew Priory was dissolved in 1585 on the orders of Elizabeth I.





Although the eastern side of the cloister at Errew Priory is reasonably well-preserved, not a lot of the priory buildings otherwise survive, since most of them have lost all trace of roofs. The surviving cloister walk is darker than customarily the case, since light only enters through narrow ogee windows. The other principal structure is the main body of the church, with simple windows at eastern and western end. The outer walls have few openings, suggesting that like many other such establishments, this one was subject to assault during the inter-familial wars that were such a feature of life in 14th and 15th century Ireland. Discovered at the end of a track through fields, Errew Priory’s appears singularly austere, but the setting on the edge of the lough is marvelous, making it easy to appreciate why a religious order would have wanted to established a presence here.

In the Roman Manner


After recent somewhat dispiriting posts, time for something more uplifting. Ballysallagh, County Kilkenny was discussed here almost five years ago (see https://theirishaesthete.com/2014/11/24/of-the-middle-size) but that page really needs to be revisited because, as a visit to the house not long ago revealed, the owners continue to be indefatigable in their improvements to the place. One of the latest additions is to the rear of the main building where a formal Italianate garden has been created. Just a handful of plants have been employed, including beech, box and Irish yew, but sophisticated design, and sound maintenance, means the eye never grows tired. Ballysallagh thankfully shows that growth, as much as decay, is possible in Ireland…