The Templetown Mausoleum, located in a graveyard adjacent to Castle Upton, County Antrim, dates from 1789. Both the house and the mausoleum were designed by Robert Adam. Customarily the commission for this monument is attributed to Arthur Upton, Baron (and future Viscount) Templetown. However, a plaque above the entrance notes that it is ‘Sacred to the Memory of the Right Honourable Arthur Upton’, who was Lord Templetown’s uncle and who had died in 1763, so it may be that Adam’s client was Lord Templetown’s father (also brother of the deceased Arthur). In any case, the rectangular mausoleum has a facade taking the form of a triumphal arch with rusticated breakfront. On either side are niches holding classical urns (a third tops the building) and above these circular reliefs of Coade stone featuring classical figures in mourning. Inside, the mausoleum is entirely empty other than a series of plaques on two side walls commemorating various members of the Upton family. Castle Upton itself was remodelled in the 19th century with the loss of its original Adam interiors, so this mausoleum represents a rare surviving example of the architect’s work in Ireland.
Category Archives: Antrim
In Carrickfergus
‘For several miles before the traveller reaches Carrickfergus, his attention will be arrested by its fine old castle, built upon a rock, which, though not lofty, yet projecting into the sea, causes it to stand out conspicuously. It consists of a massive and lofty keep, surrounded by an embattled wall of considerable circuit, fortified by towers at intervals, and having a frowning gateway, protected by two half-moon towers, connected by a curtain wall; the draw-bridge has disappeared, and the moat is filled up, but the portcullis and the apertures for letting stones, melted lead, &c., fall on the heads of assailants, are still to be seen.
The exact period at which the castle was built and the town of Carrickfergus founded, seems to be involved in some degree of doubt. M’Skimin, the accurate and laborious historian of the town, informs us that “the founding of this building is lost in the depths of antiquity;” elsewhere he, however, states that a colony was established here in 1182 by the celebrated John de Courcey, who “soon after began to erect castles and forts to secure his conquests” in Ulster. Perhaps the earliest distinct mention of the castle of Carrickfergus occurs in the account of King John’s journey in the year 1210. From the itinerary compiled by Thomas Duffus Hardy, F.S.A., from original records and published by the Record Commissioners, we find that John remained at Carrickfergus from the 19th to the 28th July, and a dispatch from him to his father, Henry II, king of England, dated at Carrickfergus, in which he mentions having taken the castle, is said to be still extant among the MMS. in the library of Trinity College Dublin. The architecture of the castle clearly shows it to have received many additions and alterations at various periods. The assizes for the county of Antrim were long held within its walls. It has at all times been esteemed an important fortress, and from time to time has been accordingly repaired; in 1793 it was converted into a barrack, as which it was until recently occupied, the great tower serving as an armoury, magazine, and ordnance storehouse. A ramble through its court-yards, along its walls, and into many of the obscurer parts of this ancient fortress, will amply reward the tourist for a short delay.’
From Belfast and its Environs (Dublin, 1842)
‘Carrickfergus Castle is supposed to have been founded by De Courcey about the end of the twelfth century, and is a place of considerable importance in the history of Ireland. From the middle of the fourteenth to the end of the sixteenth century, it was the only stronghold north of Dundalk which remained uniformly in the hands of an English garrison, and to the loyalty of the townsmen of Carrickfergus is chiefly to be attributed the recovery of the Northern Pale in the reign of Elizabeth. The castle was besieged and taken by Edward Bruce in 1315; it is said that the garrison, before surrendering, were driven to devour thirty Scots whom they had made prisoners. In 1333 the Irish overran all the south part of the county of Antrim, and the garrison of the castle with the inhabitants of the town that had arisen under shelter of its walls, were left alone in the midst of enemies. In 1386 the town was burned by the island Scots, and suffered again in 1400. In 1503 Gerald, Earl of Kildare, lord-deputy, afforded some relief to the struggling colonists by garrisoning the castle. In 1555, he Scots undere Mac Donnell, Lord of Cantyre, laid close siege to the castle until July 1556, when Sir Henry Sidney relieved the garrison with great slaughter of the besiegers. In 1573 the town was burned by Brian Mac Phelimy O’Neill, chief of Claneboy, who was hanged here along with Mac Quillan, chief of the route, in 1575…’
From The Penny Cyclopedia, Vol.VI (London, 1836)
‘The year 1760 is memorable as being the year in which the French, under the command of Commodore Thourot, landed in Carrickfergus and attacked the town. Though the castle was in a most dilapidated state, a breach being in the wall next to the sea fifty feet wide, no cannons mounted, and the garrison few in number, yet Colonel Jennings, encouraged by the mayor and other inhabitants, bravely met the invaders, and when driven back by the superior strength of their assailants, they retreated into the castle and repulsed the French, even though they forced the upper gate. But all the ammunition being expended, a parley was beaten, and the garrison capitulated on honourable terms. During the attack several singular circumstances occurred. When the French were advancing up High-street, and engaged with the English, a little child ran out playfully into the street between the contending parties. The French officer, to his honour be it recorded, observing the danger in which the little boy was in, took him up in his arms, ran with him to a house which proved to be his father’s, the sheriff, and having left him safe, returned to the engagement. This really brave and humane man was killed at Carrickfergus Castle gate…The French kept possession of Carrickfergus for some time; but the alarm having been carried all over the country, and troops gathering fast to attack them, they were constrained to embark on board their vessels and set sail; and two days afterwards were attacked off the Isle of Man by an English squadron, when Commodore Thourot was killed, and the French ships captured, and so ended an expedition which was better executed than planned, cost the French money, men and ships, without one single advantage to be derived which any man of experience or military discernment could possibly look for.’
From The Dublin Penny Journal, No.15, Vol.I, October 6 1832
Quaint and Old-Fashioned
‘Whoever has travelled by the coast road in County Antrim which connects the towns of Larne and Ballycastle, may have observed at the distance of five miles from Larne, after passing one of the boldest promontories on the entire coast, a castellated edifice, standing immediately on the roadside at the head of a beautiful and romantic bay. Nor can anyone with a taste for the picturesque have seen it – backed by an amphitheatre of mountains and fronted by the Irish Channel coast – without bestowing upon it at least a passing admiration…This castle was for many years the hospitable residence of the Shaws of Ballygally, who came originally from Greenock, in Scotland, where, from very early times, their ancestors occupied a very high position in Renfrewshire. The first of the Shaws, who came to Ireland in the beginning of the seventeenth century, was one of the Scottish settlers who were located in Ireland by King James I. In the Irish wars of 1641, the castle of Ballygally, garrisoned by its own tenantry, afforded shelter to the Protestants of the district, and in the Revolutionary wars of 1688-90, the name of Lieutenant-Colonel Show is often honourably mentioned.’
From The Architect, March 1st 1879.
James Shaw is thought to have been born around 1594, the son of Scotsman John Shaw who settled in Ireland with his family in the early 17th century and duly received a grant of land from the Earl of Antrim. One grant was made on 1st February, 1634, to ‘John Shaw, the elder, of Ballygellie, in the county of Antrim, gentleman,’ of ‘all that eighteen score acres of land in Ballygellie, aforesaid, Tarnemoney, Nogher, Carncaslen, and Corcermain’ to hold forever in fee farm, at the yearly rent of £24. James Shaw subsequently married Isabel Brisbane, also of Scottish birth, and the couple were responsible for constructing a castle which in style very much reflects their country of origin. In form, the building is a four-storey rectangular tower with a steep gable-ended roof and at each corner cone-topped bartizans supported by corbels and flanked by little dormer windows. The castle was formerly surrounded by a bawn wall, necessary given the time and place in which it was built. Early photographs do not show the small circular turrets at the corners of the grounds, so these must be a late-19th century addition to the site. Inside, above the stone door giving access to a spiral staircase can be seen inscribed ‘GODIS PROVIDENS IS MY INHERITANS’ and the date 1625, and over this a coat of arms with the initials JS and IB, standing for James Shaw and Isabel Brisbane. This used to be on the exterior of the castle but was moved to its present location around 1760 when alterations were made to the building, some of which – such as a panelled room on the first floor and sash windows – still remain.
Thought to be the oldest continually-inhabited building in Northern Ireland, Ballygally Castle remained occupied by successive generations of the Shaw family until the early 19th century. Unfortunately a litigation over ownership of the property in the 1780s left them heavily indebted and in 1820 some 450 acres around the castle had to be sold. Thereafter it appears to have been rented to a variety of tenants. In 1834, for example, it was reported as being ‘the dwelling of the chief officer of the coastguard for the prevention of smuggling, from which it would appear that it has been subject to a complete reversal of destiny, having been supposed at one time to have been a stronghold for smuggling.’ Four decades later, the Presbyterian minister and historian Classon Porter was living there and described the castle as ‘quaint and old-fashioned but that I like, and it is very warm and comfortable, the walls being 5 or 6 feet thick so that we never feel the greatest storm that blows.’ After the First World War, Colonel William Agnew Moore, whose great-grandmother had been a Shaw, came to live in the castle, the last member of the family to do so. Within a few years, he had put the building up for sale and in 1936 it was bought by the Earl of Antrim (whose ancestor had first granted the land on which it stood to John Shaw). A local newspaper reported that the earl ‘is busy at present converting this ancient mansion into a modern hotel’ which duly opened in 1938. It was sold again in the early 1950s, this time to entrepreneur Cyril Lord (who had a carpet factory in neighbouring County Down). He refurbished and extended the property before it changed hands once more. Today Ballygally Castle continues to operate as an hotel, the late Charles Brett deeming additions to the north to be ‘unobjectionable.’ while ‘more lurid, Disneylike proposals were fortunately disallowed in 1984.’
Re-Engagement
Notable for having been largely designed early in the last century by architect Clough Williams-Ellis, the village of Cushendun, County Antrim has featured here before (see Cornwall in Ulster « The Irish Aesthete). Since the mid-1950s, much of the place has been in National Trust’s ownership, including the Glenmona, former home of Ronald John McNeill, Baron Cushendun who commissioned the house from Williams-Ellis after its predecessor was burnt down by the IRA in 1922. For some time the building was leased to the Health and Social Care Board, and used as a nursing home with the inevitable adjustments made to its interior. That arrangement ended and it appears a new purpose has yet to be found for Glenmona. While the National Trust has undertaken much good work on other properties for which it is responsible, such does not appear to be the case here. However, last year an independent body in the social housing sector, Supporting Communities announced that it had been approached by the National Trust ‘to help them re-engage positively with local stakeholders and the community in general’ and to develop the house ‘into a thriving hub for community activity.’ Let’s hope the eventual outcome is that the trust re-engages with this important part of the region’s architectural heritage and that it receives better care than has been the case of late.
Cornwall in Ulster
The gable end and centre of the façade of Maud Cottages in Cushendun, County Antrim. A terrace of four houses on the village seafront (and with views across to Scotland when the weather is sufficiently clear), they are of two storeys, the lower white-washed, the upper slate-fronted with a lovely bow at the centre of the block. Built to commemorate Maud McNeil following her death in 1925, the cottages were designed, like much else in Cushendun by Clough Williams-Ellis, best-known for creating the picturesque village of Portmeirion in North Wales. He was responsible for a number of buildings in Cushendun, all commissioned Ronald McNeil (future first Lord Cushendun) and beginning in 1912 with another group of housing built around three sides of a square, all intended to evoke fishermen’s cottages in Maud McNeil’s native Cornwall.
In Need of Support
The involvement of Irish families in the Caribbean slave trade was discussed here some weeks ago when considering Monasterboice House, County Louth (see Dirty Money, March 11th 2019). The same source of revenue appears to have played a part in funding extensive work in the early 19th century at Kilwaughter Castle, County Antrim. The original house here is believed to date from 1622, a fortified dwelling built by Sir Patrick Agnew who around that time had purchased the land on which it stands from Sir Randall MacDonnell, first Earl of Antrim. Successive generations lived here until William Agnew died in 1776, leaving the property to his grandson Edward Jones, then still a boy, with the proviso that the latter take the surname Agnew. He was a younger son of Valentine Jones, who was extensively involved in slave trading in the West Indies, as was his eldest son (another Valentine) who lived in the Caribbean for some 33 years and, two years before Edward inherited Kilwaughter, was elected a member of the House of Assembly in Barbados. Unfortunately the next generation of Valentine Jones disgraced the family by misappropriating funds and colouring rum to give it the appearance of age: in 1809 he was found guilty of fraud and peculation, and sentenced to three years in Newgate Prison.
Edward Jones Agnew was only a child when he inherited Kilwaughter, and for the next 12 years the estate was administered by agents while he attended Harrow and then Trinity College Dublin. It was only in the late 1780s that he came to County Antrim and took responsibility for Kilwaughter, accompanied by his younger sister Margaret. Seemingly they arrived to find the house almost entirely stripped of its contents: ‘there was not so much as a tablecloth, or a spoon or a knife or fork for them to take their dinner with.’ By this date the old building was neglected, and out-of-date, so its young proprietor decided to embark on a an extensive programme of refurbishment and enlargement. The architect chosen for this task was John Nash, who from 1801 onwards was engaged in designing Killymoon Castle, County Antrim for the Stewart family, cousins of the Agnews. Beginning in 1806, Nash transformed Kilwaugher into an elaborate castle, adding a vast wing to the immediate east of the original fortified house. The focal point of his design is a castellated tower in the south-east corner, its sandstone window sills carved with elaborate abstract decorations. From here, a range of reception rooms ran northwards to a narrower but taller polygonal tower, with views over the parkland towards a newly created lake covering more than five acres. While his land holdings were substantial and could have borne much of the expense involved (Killymoon Castle is supposed to have cost £80,000), might Edward Jones Agnew have benefitted from the estate of his slave-trading father Valentine Jones who died in 1805, just a year before work began at Kilwaughter? The enquiry seems not unreasonable to make.
The later history of Kilwaughter is not especially happy. Edward Jones Agnew never married (nor did his sister Margaret with whom he lived) but had several children with the daughter of a tenant farmer: she and other members of her family were later sent to Baltimore, Maryland with the promise of an annual stipend. When Agnew died in 1834, the estate was inherited by his illegitimate son William who, together with his sister, were then cared for by their aunt Margaret. However, following her death and William Agnew becoming an adult, he moved to Paris and spent most of the next 40 years there, dying unmarried in 1891 and, it seems, leaving sundry debts for the payment of which a mortgage of £30,000 had to be raised. A niece, Mary Maria Augusta Simon (daughter of his sister) next inherited the estate but by this time she was married to an Italian count Ugo Balzani, and living between his family home near Bologna and Oxford. For some thirty years Kilwaughter was rented to John Galt Smith, an Irish linen exporter and distant relative of the Agnews, and his socially ambitious American wife Bessie who modernised the building and entertained extensively; he died in 1899 but she remained there until 1922 before returning to her native country. By now, the castle was surrounded by very little land and when the Second World War broke out it was seized by the government as ‘alien’ property (the Balzani family being Italian and therefore deemed to be enemies of the state). For a period it was occupied by American troops but then stood empty before being sold by the Northern Irish government to a Belfast scrap metal company which stripped off the lead, thereby leading to the roof giving way. What remained was handed back to the Balzani family, and understandably they decided to sell the property: this finally occurred in 1982. Since then efforts have been made to ensure the security of the building, and ideally its restoration: some of the walls are literally in need of support. The present owners, and a number of local people are valiantly battling to save Kilwaughter from total ruin (a task not helped by the presence of lime quarries in the immediate vicinity). As these photographs make plain, those involved in the project face a substantial challenge and deserve all possible assistance.
Much of the information here came from a most interesting article, The Agnews of Kilwaughter by Jacqueline Haugseng-Agnew in Familia: Ulster Genealogical Review, No.32, 2016.
For more on Kilwaughter Castle and work being undertaken to secure its future, please see https://www.kilwaughtercastle.com
Rags and Tatters
The remains of Ardclinis church, County Antrim, believed to have been founded in the early Christian period by St MacNissi, or perhaps St MacKenna: the present ruins are from the later Middle Ages. A crozier, called the Bachil McKenna, used to be set into the building and was used by local people for the taking of oaths and detection of false statements. However, it was subsequently acquired by a local farmer called Galvin. He and his successors, when not employing the crozier as a hook in the family home, would dip it into water being given to sick cows: in the early 1960s it was acquired by the National Museum of Ireland. In front of the ruins is a blackthorn ‘Rag Tree.’ Traditionally rags, belonging to someone sick or with a particular problem, are tied to a tree in the belief that this will resolve the issue.
Institutionalised
The garden front of Garron Tower, County Antrim. Built at a cost of £4,000 over several years from 1848 onwards, the house sits on a plateau high above the sea and with views, on a clear day, across to Scotland. Intended as a summer residence, Garron Tower’s architect is thought to have been Lewis Vulliamy, his client being Frances Anne, Marchioness of Londonderry who had inherited land here from her mother, the second Countess of Antrim. It has been suggested that her intention was to own a property superior to Glenarm Castle, inherited by her aunt, which stands a few miles further south. Garron Tower’s austere exterior is not aided by the use of black basalt, but the original interiors were said to be luxurious. The property was little used after Lady Londonderry’s death and by the end of the 19th century was rented for use as a hotel. It was badly damaged by fire in 1914, the house was converted into a school in 1950 and now exudes a grimly institutional air.
A Shaggy Dog Story
The Massereene Hound, a carving believed to date from 1612. According to legend, not long after her marriage in 1607 to Sir Hugh Clotworthy of Antrim Castle, Mary Langford was walking alone in the woods when threatened by attack from a wolf. Fortunately at the same moment an Irish wolfhound appeared and saved Lady Clotworthy by killing the wolf. A second tale has it that the self-same wolfhound also ensured the Clotworthys were spared an assault on their castle by howling and thereby warning them of the imminent danger. Whatever the truth, the sculpture stood on the original castle until the 18th century when it was moved to one of the estate walls. It now stands on a plinth adjacent to the restored walled gardens.
On a Date
A date stone beneath one of the windows on the façade of the Old Rectory at Glenarm, County Antrim. It carries the year 1838 but the house is believed to be much older than this, a section to the rear likely having been built in the 17th century by a settler in the area, so perhaps the house was originally occupied by a tenant farmer before becoming a residence for the local Church of Ireland clergyman. Another date stone over the main entrance is inscribed with the year 1858, indicating further work was carried out then. The same stone reports the house was restored in 1990 by its present owner, the artist Hector McDonnell.
