Recently going through the ever-expanding collection of photographs, the Irish Aesthete came across a cache, taken some years ago and showing Drummin, County Kildare. Until his death five years ago, this house was home to the hospitable Grattan de Courcy Wheeler, whose many lunches and dinners, prepared by an ever-loyal housekeeper Mary, were renowned for their length and liveliness. Grattan was a throwback to the kind of 18th century landed gentleman described with various degrees of delight and disapproval by the likes of Sir Jonah Barrington, Arthur Young and many others. Drummin too seemed to belong to an earlier age, certainly many modern comforts were not to be found there but that rarely deterred guests from accepting an invitation to visit and, if the evening went on too late (and the claret was poured too liberally), to stay overnight. 

Its name derived from the Irish Droim Mín, meaning ‘Little Ridge of a Hill’, Drummin dates from the mid-18th century, a lease for some 580 acres of land here being taken out in 1746 by the Rev Richard Grattan: in 1840 this lease would be renewed for three lives by his grandson Dr Richard Grattan. The Grattans of Drummin were related to Ireland’s famous parliamentary patriot, Henry Grattan, both branches seemingly descended from the Rev Patrick Grattan of Belcamp, County Dublin: two of the Rev Patrick’s sons, Robert and John, also both clergymen, were executors of the will of Jonathan Swift, a family friend. As for Drummin, the original house was of two storeys over basement and with a rendered facade of three bays (five bays to the garden front). It is thought that the centre breakfront originally contained the main entrance to the building (where an arched window is now) but in the 19th century single bay extensions were added to either side, that to the north containing a new entrance hall. According to legend, when the house was first being constructed, a curse was put on the place that no eldest son would succeed his father, and indeed this is what came to pass while the Grattans owned the property. The aforementioned Dr Richard Grattan, a distinguished Dublin physician, had two sons, one of whom died at the age of 15, the other at the age of 22. Drummin was therefore inherited by the doctor’s daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, and, following the former’s death, the house and estate, which by then ran to 2,000 acres, passed to Robert ‘Diamond’ de Courcy Wheeler, a doctor who served as Chief Medical Officer to the British army in Malta during the First World War. 

Robert de Courcy Wheeler does not appear to have spent too much time in Drummin, living for many years in south Dublin. In 1939 the property was inherited by his son, Cecil de Courcy Wheeler who, when the Land Commission broke up the old estate, established a successful mushroom growing business on what land he still retained. In due course, Drummin passed to his son, Grattan and following the latter’s retirement from many years working in banking in England and the United States, he settled in the house and, as already mentioned, embarked on some two decades of entertaining his wide circle of friends. Little was done to the place, with rooms always rather higgledy-piggledy and heating something of a rarity: on winter nights, guests could be found jostling for a place in front of the drawing room fire. Some time after Grattan de Courcy’s death, Drummin was sold. Now in new ownership, no doubt it will undergo some changes and necessary improvements. But these pictures are a souvenir of how it used to look, a remembrance of things past.

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