A Lot Done, More to Do

Apr10

‘A lot done, more to do’ was the slogan used by an Irish political party in a general election fifteen years ago. It might also apply to the study of this country’s architectural history about which the more we learn, the more we realise how little we know. There are certain areas in which a considerable amount of research has been undertaken, but many others where next to nothing has yet been done. With regard to the latter, investigation into the design and character of ancillary buildings on country estates is a subject that has hitherto not been explored in any depth. Yet these structures – the stable- and farmyards and so forth – were as important to the successful management of an estate as was the large house at its centre. Today there is much interest in what took place beyond the green baize door inside a country house, so that the lives of domestic servants and the quarters they occupied are given increasing notice. However, their outdoor equivalents – those who lived and worked in ancillary buildings – do not seem to attract much attention. Nor do the buildings themselves, even though they were often as well designed, constructed and finished as the big house they were there to sustain. Indeed they are often so sturdy that in instances where the country house has either fallen or been pulled down, the outbuildings remain. Such is the case at Donore, County Westmeath.

For hundreds of years Donore was occupied by a branch of the Nugent family the first of whom, Hugh de Nugent, came to Ireland in the 12^th century and received lands in Westmeath. In the fifteenth century one of his descendants, James Nugent, married the heiress Elizabeth Holywood and it appears that through her inheritance the lands of Donore passed to the couple’s heirs. In the 17^th century, the Nugents of Donore fought with their Irish compatriots in the Confederate Wars and were duly indicted, yet somehow despite consistently remaining Roman Catholic they managed to retain their property. In fact, by judicious marriages they improved their circumstances. In the 18^th century, for example, James Nugent, first baronet, married Catherine King, elder daughter and co-heiress of Robert King of Drewstown, County Meath: that house was discussed here last week. And so it continued into the middle of the last century when, shortly before her death in November 1957 the widowed Aileen, Lady Nugent sold the estate to the Franciscan order which had re-settled nearby on land gifted to the friars by the Nugents. According to the present head of the family, the price paid for this transaction was £20,000. Apparently Lady Nugent had insisted as a condition of the sale that the house would be preserved. However this was not to be. The Franciscans subsequently sold on the greater part of the estate to the Land Commission, Donore was duly condemned, and pulled down. Today a bungalow occupies the site.

There seem to be no photographic records of Donore other than an aerial image of the site, located on rising ground to the south of Lough Derravaragh. However, according to the family it bore striking similarities in design to Oakley Park in Celbridge, County Kildare. Now called St Raphael’s and owned by the St John of God religious order, Oakley Park dates from 1724 and is believed to have been designed by Thomas Burgh. Of three storeys over basement, it has a seven-bay façade with a three-bay breakfront centred on the groundfloor doorcase incorporating a segmental pediment. The similarities between this property and Donore are interesting, because the latter is generally considered to have been built at the end of the 18^th century, and to have been of little consequence. In his guide to Irish country houses, Mark Bence-Jones summarily dismissed Donore as ‘A plain 3 storey Georgian block,’ and the place does not merit even a mention in Casey and Rowan’s guide to the buildings of North Leinster.
Yet if it dated from the 1720s and shared stylistic traits with Oakley Park, then this would explain the appearance of a once-grand yard still standing to the east. Although now in pitiful condition, it is still possible to see how magnificent this complex must once have been. Employing crisply defined limestone, the southern entrance takes the form of a simplified but rugged triumphal arch, which is then topped by an hexagonal tower at least twice the height of the arch. Inside the yard, the northern side is focused on an equally immense three-bay pedimented breakfront coachhouse, while to the west is another arched entrance, the upper portion of which is occupied by a dovecote. Throughout the complex, the sophistication of both design and execution is remarkable. Bold and confident, its appearance suggests the now-lost house must have possessed the same traits and that, contrary to received wisdom, Donore was built at least half a century earlier than the date of 1790, which is usually given for its construction. If this is the case then its loss, and the lack of a decent photographic record, are all the more tragic. We are nowhere near fully understanding Ireland’s architectural history. A lot done, more to do.

Out of Service

Apr8

The former Church of Ireland church at Rathaspick, County Laois. There was an older structure on the site but the present one dates, as a stone over the entrance confirms, from 1813 when it was built with a grant of £553 from the Board of First Fruits. Unusually it is aligned on a north-south axis rather than the more liturgically correct east-west. The building remained in use for services until the 1950s when, like so many others, declining attendances caused its closure. A photograph of it taken some twenty years ago for the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage shows the unroofed church almost submerged in ivy but it has since been cleaned up, and the surrounding graveyard made more accessible.

Suffered by Neglect to Fall into Ruin

Apr5

A stone on the central archway of the former barracks in Ballyshannon, County Donegal carries the date 1700 but the person responsible for the building’s design remains unclear. Rolf Loeber proposes William Robinson who until that year acted as Surveyor General in Ireland. However, Alistair Rowan and others have put forward the name of Thomas Burgh who succeeded to that position in 1700. Either way the property is, as Donegal County Council’s own Area Plan states ‘of national importance’ and therefore its present condition of neglect must be regretted. In 1760 an official report drawn up on the state of barracks around the country noted that this one ‘hath been suffered by Neglect to fall into Ruin, insomuch, that excepting the outside Walls of the Building, the Whole will require and entire Repair.’ Over two and a half centuries later, little seems to have changed.

Confusion and Clarification

Apr3

Exactly fifty years ago this month, writing inthe Irish Georgian Society’s Bulletin, the late Knight of Glin proposed that Francis Bindon had been responsible for the design of Drewstown, County Meath. Aside from the presence of certain stylistic details, of which more in due course, one of his reasons for this attribution, given in a footnote, was ‘Verbal information from George McVeagh of Dublin whose family owned the house from c.1780-1950.’ The Knight also noted, as have others, that the house was built for a certain Barry Barry: in the 1993 guide to North Leinster written by Christine Casey and Alistair Rowan, the authors state ‘Little is known of its reputed builder, Barry Barry, who was evidently a man of some sophistication.’
Barry Barry was indeed a man of sophisticated taste, since in due course he would commission work from James Wyatt, but he was not the owner of Drewstown at the time it was built. Barry Barry was born the Hon Barry Maxwell, second son of John Maxwell, first Baron Farnham. In 1757 he married Margaret King whose father Robert owned Drewstown and to which, it appears, she was the co-heiress. But his mother had also been an heiress, her name being Judith Barry of Newtownbarry (now Bunclody), County Wexford. In 1771, when his mother died and presumably for the advantage of an inheritance, Barry Maxwell changed his name to Barry Barry. At that stage it must have seemed unlikely he would inherit the main Maxwell estate in County Cavan. However, in 1778 his elder brother’s only son died, as did the elder brother just a year later. Accordingly the Farnham estate passed to Barry Barry who reverted back to his original surname of Maxwell, and in due course – like his late sibling – he was created Earl of Farnham. Tellingly the Drewstown estate was sold to the McVeagh family the year after he had come into possession of that in Cavan where he asked Wyatt to work on the house. One can see why, until now, confusion has arisen so at least in this respect there is clarification.

To revert to Drewstown, the Knight’s attribution of its design to Francis Bindon is one of a number he made in 1967. Astonishingly these have never since been reconsidered. Bindon’s name has occurred here many times before (as recently as last Saturday), and in regard to such houses as Bessborough, County Kilkenny (In the Borough of Bess, November 25th 2013), New Hall, County Clare (New Blood for New Hall, August 25th 20014), Woodstock, County Kilkenny (Of Wondrous Beauty Did the Vision Seem, May 13th 2013) and St John’s Square, Limerick (When New Becomes Old, March 24th 2014). The Irish Architectural Archive’s Dictionary of Irish Architects features twenty-one entries for Bindon, the majority of them once more relying on the Knight’s attributions. Yet one must wonder whether Bindon was capable of producing as much as has been proposed, given that he was also a portrait painter, a Member of Parliament and a landowner in Counties Limerick and Clare.
We do not know the date of Bindon’s birth but he is recorded as being in Italy in 1716, the year in which his brother Samuel married Anne, daughter of Thomas Coote of Cootehill, County Cavan and aunt of the architect Edward Lovett Pearce. As an architect he was an amateur, in the sense that it was not his full-time profession. In his work in this field, he was associated with Pearce and also with Richard Castle, while as a painter he produced portraits of friends such as Jonathan Swift (no less than four such likenesses) and in Dublin was given the freedom of the Guild of St Luke (to which all painters belonged) in 1733. Some years later he received an official pension of £100 and was reported to have died ‘suddenly in his chariot on his way to the country’ in June 1765.

Here is the Knight’s fifty-year old description of Drewstown, with an explanation why he believed the house to have been designed by Bindon: ‘There, in the detailing, we see the usual concern with moulded block architraves, for the ground floor of the seven-bay entrance is composed with them. A later porch makes the front more awkward than needs be, though as a whole the windows are uncomfortably placed. The richly voluted and pilastered central first floor widow with its segmental entablature carries up to a further pilastered and segmcntally capped attic window which in typical Bindon manner breaks through the frieze of the house. A bow window forms the main ornament on the East front which faces the lake in not dissimilar fashion to Castle’s Rochfort, Co. Westmeath. As an exterior it is best viewed from the south-east for here the contrast of bow and breakfront make a not unsatisfying, solidly plump and peaceful image. The front door opens immediately into a galleried panelled hall with a grand staircase at one end. Heavy segmental and triangular pedimented doors lead off into the other rooms, all of which are relatively plain. The plasterwork in the hall is somewhat crude though the Apollo and rays surrounded by trophies over the stairs are pleasingly executed. As an interior feature this galleried hall is an important hallmark for it rarely occurs in houses of this date in Ireland and it seems always to be associated with buildings that are attributable to Francis Bindon…’

Casey and Rowan were, rightly, more harsh in their description of Drewstown’s design, commenting on ‘ill-conceived classical decoration in the central entrance bay’ of the façade, adding that while the quality of the stonework is good, ‘the detailing is ungainly and ill-proportioned, characteristics which are even more in evidence in the interior.’ With regard to the latter, the authors note the entrance hall’s debt to the Queen’s House in Greenwich, designed by Inigo Jones at least a century earlier. The space is a large square with the stairs to the rear leading to a gallery that runs around the entire first floor. Whoever was responsible clearly miscalculated the proportions, as the segmental-headed door pediments ‘collide with the room cornice and with the underside of the gallery.’ Furthermore, inside the hall the entrance itself is slightly off-centre leading to an adjacent window being partially concealed by the wall of the adjoining room.
Drewstown is provincial in the best sense of the word, and suggests that someone even more amateur than Bindon came up with its design: perhaps Robert King who would have owned the property in the mid-1740s when it is believed to have been built. Most wonderfully, the entire original double-entrance hall has survived intact (unfortunately the same is not true of other rooms) with all its panelling, staircase and gallery balustrading. As mentioned, around 1780 Barry Maxwell sold the estate to Major Joseph McVeagh who a few years later married Margery Wynch, daughter of a wealthy East Indian ‘Nabob’, Alexander Wynch, Governor of Madras. Their descendants remained at Drewstown until 1952 when the house and sixty-eight acres of land were sold to an American mission agency which first ran an orphanage and then a boarding school on the site. In more recent years Drewstown has operated as a Christian retreat centre.

Written in Stone

Apr1

An abiding problem in the study of Irish country houses is ascribing a date of construction. Not so Bonnettstown, County Kilkenny where on completion of building work the original owner helpfully provided this information. On one of the quoins to the left of the entrance is the gentleman’s name, Samuel Mathews, while its match to the right features the date May 14th 1737. On the other hand, what remains unknown is who was responsible for the design of Bonnettstown: like a number of other houses in this part of the country for the past half-century it has been attributed to the gentleman-architect Francis Bindon.

More on Bonnettstown at a later date…

Still Inhabited

Mar29

Donamon Castle, County Roscommon is said to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited buildings in Ireland. It is believed that originally there was a fort here (whence the name Dún Iomáin, fort of Iomán), but the first recorded reference to the place occurs in the Annals of the Four Masters for the year 1154. In 1232, the Anglo-Norman Adam de Staunton further fortified the site but his works were captured and demolished by the O’Connors a year later. After passing back and forth between different hands, the castle was occupied from the early 14th century onwards by a branch of the Burkes who remained here until in 1688 it passed to the Caulfeilds (the main branch of which became Earls of Charlemont). In the last century, like many other estates Donamon was broken up by the Irish Land Commission, the castle being acquired in 1939 by the Divine Word Missionaries, members of which community remain there to the present time. Although much altered and extended in the 18th and 19th century, the core of the old castle resembles that at Bunratty, County Clare, both front and rear featuring a tall arched recess between square towers.

A Remarkable Survivor

Mar27

From Hugh Allingham’s Ballyshannon: Its History and Antiquities (1879): ‘At the close of 1739 this country was visited with a frost of extraordinary length and severity.It extended into the year 1740, lasting in all 108 days. A period of great scarcity and distress followed, and it was at that time that General Folliott, the owner of Wardtown, decided to build Wardtown Castle, thereby giving employment to the distressed classes of the neighbourhood. The remuneration they received during the progress of the work was sixpence per day and their food. Considering the value of money in those days, this was a liberal allowance and fully equivalent to 2s. per day at the present time. Before the erection of Wardtown Castle, the Folliott family had a residence on their property there.’

The first of the Folliotts to come to Ireland was Henry, born in Worcestershire in 1569 who, like many younger sons chose to seek his fortune by joining the army: by 1594 he is listed as serving in County Donegal. In the early 17th century he began to accumulate land in the area and two years before his death in 1622 he was created first Baron Folliott of Ballyshannon. He was succeeded by his nine-year old eldest son Thomas who, on his death, was succeeded by Henry, third and last Baron Folliott. When he died without a direct male heir in 1716, while the unentailed estates were divided between his five sisters, the entailed properties passed to a cousin, the man mentioned by Hugh Allingham, Lieutenant-General John Folliott. He in turn died without male heir and so his estate passed to another cousin, also John Folliott, whose family property was in neighbouring County Sligo. It is for this reason that from the later decades of the 18th century the Folliotts were no longer resident in Donegal.

The early 17th century Plantation of Ulster saw land in that part of the country divided between a number of different parties, including soldiers like the first Henry Folliott and other adventurers, the Established Church and Trinity College, Dublin. The last of these owned the parcel of some 700 acres on which Wardtown Castle stands but in 1616 leased it to the Folliotts who already held a lot of land in the vicinity. When the lease was renewed in 1733 it came with the stipulation that the lessee had to build ‘within ten years, a house of lime and stone forty foot by eighteen foot and one and a half storeys high.’ As can be seen, the house as constructed by General Folliott is very much larger than demanded. Wardtown Castle is of three storeys over raised basement, with three half-round towers on the front and one in the centre of the rear. On the ground floor, the central entrance hall accordingly has apsed ends and is flanked by two large rooms each measuring twenty-one feet square with windows on either side. Off these, to the front are perfectly round rooms both thirteen feet in diameter: on the domed ceilings of these survives delicate plasterwork (likewise some of the more robust plaster panelling in the former drawing room also remains). Behind the round rooms and similarly accessed from the reception areas are identically proportioned square stair halls on the walls of which can still be seen evidence of their former purpose. The design of Wardtown is rigorously governed by symmetry.

The question is: who was responsible for designing Wardtown? Writing in 1979, Alistair Rowan noted that the building is ‘similar to the small conceits by Vanbrugh but on a larger scale.’ Furthermore its exterior bears a striking resemblance to the likewise now-ruined Arch Hall, County Meath (for more of which, including many pictures, see The Untriumphal Arch, December 15th 2014). Although some alterations to the latter were undertaken in the 19th century (and the fenestration is somewhat different), it too is of three storeys over basement, is one room deep, has three half-round towers to the front,and circular rooms to the front at each end. If not twins, the houses are first-cousins and, speaking of kinship, owing to their Vanbrughian qualities, both buildings have been attributed to his relation, Sir Edward Lovett Pearce. Certainly the late Maurice Craig thought Pearce responsible for the pair. However, there is a problem with this attribution since Pearce died in 1733, the year in which Folliott signed his new lease with Trinity College, Dublin and at least six years before he initiated building work on the site. Might he have seen Arch Hall at some earlier date and simply ‘borrowed’ the design? Might there have been some, as yet unknown, connection with the Payne (or Paine) family then living at Arch Hall? We may never know but the links are too apparent to be overlooked.

As mentioned, during the 18th century the Folliott’s Donegal estates passed to diverse cousins so while they continued to be the leaseholders of this land from Trinity College, Dublin they did not live there. In Pigott’s Directory of 1824 a Dr Simon Sheil is listed as resident in Wardtown and just over a decade later the Likely family sublet the house from the Folliotts. They seem to have been the last occupants of the building, leaving it around a century ago. Thereafter it seems not to have been used and so fell into the present state of ruin. Even in this condition, it is a striking sight, on a slightly raised piece of land in western Donegal, overlooking the Erne estuary and with nothing remotely like it in the vicinity: it is scarcely possible to conceive the impact such a building must have made when first constructed. The scene remains memorable, a site to the immediate front being occupied by that embodiment of 20th century Irish architectural ambition, the bungalow, while the immediate rear is filled with material relating to the ‘adventure farm’ run here. Between the two stands Wardtown, a remarkable survivor from another age.

Offering Tonic Views

Mar25

The thatched summer house in the grounds of Florence Court, County Fermanagh. This is at least the third such structure on the site, the earliest version being known from a photograph depicting the third Earl of Enniskillen and his family inside the original 19th century ‘Heather House.’ In a memoir published in 1972 the late Nancy, Countess of Enniskillen observed how, ‘On the highest level of The Pleasure Grounds, there used to stand a little “summer house.” Here on a warm sunny day ideally without wind and wrinkled only by the wings of birds and insects, on such a day at Florence Court, the Cole family would adjourn to drink their tea and enjoy the tonic view of the valley and the mountain.’ Inevitably the vulnerable materials used in its construction meant this building did not survive and in 1993 the National Trust commissioned a replica from two craftsmen: it lasted until August 2014 when completely destroyed by teenage arsonists. Since then another replacement has been erected here.

More on Florence Court in due course.

A Truly Magnificent Structure

Mar22

Although only portions remain, enough of St Thomas’ Priory in Ballybeg, County Cork survives to give an idea of how important this religious house once was. Founded by Philip de Barry for the Canons Regular of St Augustine in 1229, the buildings included a church measuring 166 feet in length and 26 feet in width: today only the towering western end with its pair of lancet windows still stands. This fortified section dates from the late 14th/15th centuries, together with a similar tower further west (used for accommodation) and testifies to the uncertain state of the country during this period, when even ecclesiastical property was not safe from attack. In Monasticon Hibernicum, published in 1786, Mervyn Archdall wrote of Ballybeg Priory, ‘the traces of the foundation, with a high tower a considerable way to the south-west, prove it to have been a truly magnificent structure.’

Shedding Light on a Subject

Mar20

The houses of Dublin’s Henrietta Street have featured here more than once, and deservedly so since even if many have suffered long periods of neglect those that remain are among the most important such buildings in the capital. Henrietta Street was the first major scheme undertaken by the 18th century’s enlightened and far-seeing property developer Luke Gardiner (would that his present successors displayed such taste and perspicacity). From 1721 onwards he began to construct large domestic residences on what had hitherto been open ground to the north of the existing city. Nothing better demonstrates confidence in such an enterprise than the developer himself living on site, and around 1731 Luke Gardiner built his own house, the architect responsible being the most fashionable of the era, Sir Edward Lovett Pearce. This is 10 Henrietta Street which remained in ownership, even if increasingly intermittent occupation, through successive generations of the original family until 1829 when Charles Gardiner, Earl of Blessington died without a male heir. His fascinating second wife, born Marguerite Power, is believed to have visited the house only once and it eventually became used by members of the legal profession (not surprisingly since the Gardiner estate thereafter became immersed in long and costly litigation). In 1899 the building was acquired by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, members of which order continue to live there still.

Unlike many other properties on Henrietta Street, the interiors of No.10 remain relatively unaltered, the most notable changes occurring during the 18th century when the house was still owned and lived in by the Gardiners. On the ground floor, a rear room originally known as the Breakfast Parlour, appears least changed from the original decorative scheme, with a splendid doorcase flanked by Corinthian columns and topped by a pedimented entablature: the ceiling here, unlike most of the others, exemplifies sober early 18th century classicism, compartmentalised in low-relief geometric plasterwork patterns.
Structurally the most significant intervention was a reconfiguring of the entrance hall and staircase. When the house was first built, it featured a double-height entrance containing stairs leading to the first-floor. However, some years after the death of Luke Gardiner in 1755 his son Charles reordered this space to create a single-storey entrance hall, behind which a new staircase hall was instated. Probably around the same time a number of rooms were given new ceilings in the rococo manner. These decorations are important because in the majority of cases they are made not of plaster but papier-mâché. The use of this medium is unusual but not unique – a number of other examples survive elsewhere in the city and in Carton, County Kildare – but it seems strange to find it here. One of the attractions of papier-mâché was its relative cheapness (relative to stuccowork, that is) but the Gardiners were certainly affluent to afford anything they wished. On the other hand, its great merit is easier (and cleaner) installation than plaster, so perhaps this is why papier-mâché was preferred for the redecoration of existing rooms.
It was not used, on the other hand, for the saloon, or ballroom (now used as a chapel), which in its present form looks to have been either added or extended at the time when Charles Gardiner was re-fashioning other spaces in the house. The saloon ceiling (central photograph above) while stylistically not unlike the others on this level is of plasterwork, and the other striking decorative feature is a substantial Venetian window in the centre of the west wall.

An inventory survives for 10 Henrietta Street, taken in November 1772 and itemising the contents of each room in the house. It adds immensely to our understanding not just of this property but also of how rooms in an 18th century urban residence were furnished. The answer is: relatively sparsely. The two interlinked first-floor drawing rooms, for example, each contained a large pier glass (valued at £12 & 10 shillings, and £9 respectively), and a marble-topped table (£4 and £3) but only a handful of other items, at least those considered worth recording. The Ante Chamber – formerly the upper portion of the entrance hall – featured ‘2 Large Landscapes in Gilt frames’ (£22 & 15 shillings), a large Dutch market scene (£7) and a mahogany dressing table (just 15 shillings). The most notable items were in the saloon which held two marble-topped tables with brass borders (£9), two ‘large Pictures of the Cartoons Gilt Frames’ (a pair of cartoons attributed to Raphael and valued at £50), two full-length portraits in gilt frames of George I and the Duke of Bolton (£17), a similar portrait of the Earl of Stafford and his secretary (£7), a pair of mahogany card tables (£1 & 16 shillings) and ‘2 Plates of Glass in late Mr Gardiner’s frames’ (£17). And so it goes on through the house, giving us an insight into living conditions at the time. Coupled with the preservation of the house itself (which benefitted some years ago from a major restoration programme that saw many of the rooms brought back to their initial state), 10 Henrietta Street sheds clearer light than perhaps any other such property in Dublin on how a grand urban residence looked in the Georgian period.

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