Category Archives: Architectural History

The Irish Dizzy

Many people will be familiar with the life of Benjamin Disraeli, popularly known as ‘Dizzy’, leader of the British Conservative party from 1868 until his death in 1881, twice Prime Minister during that period, and a great favourite of Queen Victoria. Much less well-known will be an Irish man of slightly earlier period with a strikingly similar name. Benjamin Disraell (c. 1766-1814) has betimes been proposed as an uncle of the future premier, although it is worth noting the slightly different spelling of his surname (it ends with a double l rather than an i). Furthermore, as was pointed out by Bernard Shillman, (writing in the Dublin Historical Record Vol. 3, No. 4, Jun. – Aug., 1941), Disraeli’s father Isaac is reported to have been an only son, meaning he would not have had a brother. As for the Irish Mr Disraell, while his origins are appear uncertain (he may have come to Ireland as a youth, and it has been proposed that he was of French Huguenot extraction), in December 1795 he is registered as – as a public notary – entering a Deed of Partnership with one Joseph Walker of Anglesea Street, Dublin to buy and sell lottery tickets and shares, etc., and deal generally in the ‘trade, art or mystery’ of the lottery business from premises at 105 Grafton Street. Almost five years later, in July 1800, Messrs Walker and Disraell advertised in the Freeman’s Journal that ‘the only Prize of £30,000 ever sold in this Kingdom’ had been obtained fromtheir office, ‘besides an innumerable Quantity of minor Prizes, such as £5,000, £2,000 £1,000, £500 etc., etc., etc.’  Shillman noted the memorial of a lease, dated 31st August, 1801, by Benjamin Disraell to Hugh Fitzpatrick, printer and bookseller, the premises described as No. 4 East Side of Capel Street near Essex Bridge for 47 years at an annual rental of £120. This is the building which can be seen in James Malton’s print of Essex Bridge and Capel Street published in 1797.

Benjamin Disraell was sufficiently successful in business that by the age of 35, he was able to retire to the country, buying an estate called Bettyfield, near Rathvilly, County Carlow. Although extensively altered c.1825, the core of the house here dates from around 1780, a five-bay, three-storey over basement building. Now called Beechy Park, since 2008 it has been owned by horse trainer Jim Bolger. Unhappily, Mr Disraell was not to enjoy his property for long, dying in 1814, at the age of 48; he was buried in the churchyard of St Peter’s, Dublin. His will made provision for a number of bequests for charitable purposes.Among these was the sum of £1,000 ‘to be expended in building a good and substantial house as near to the town of Rathvilly as may be, for the purpose of a free school for the education of poor children, and accommodation for a schoolmaster; the further sum of £2,000 for the endowment of said school, to be conducted on the most enlightened and liberal principles, under the care and superintendence of the Lord Bishop of Leighlin and Ferns.’

The schoolhouse constructed thanks to Benjamin Disraell’s bequest opened in 1826 and continued to serve the same purpose until 1977. It was designed by County Cork-born Joseph Welland, who would later go on to become Architect to the Board of First Fruits and subsequently to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. Standing in its own grounds, from the exterior, the building suggests it might be a small Palladian villa. Of cut granite, it has six bays, with round-headed recessed windows in the centre block and flanking bays to pedimented wings. Inside, the former school is larger than initially appears to be the case. The wings each hold a large, high-ceilinged chamber (presumably once classrooms), while the centre block is of three storeys with several rooms at each level. After it ceased to operate as a school, the property was converted into a community centre but in recent weeks has been offered for sale at a price of €275,000. A building of high quality and fine design, one must hope that it soon finds a new owner, someone who will cherish this legacy of the Irish Dizzy.

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A Good Gossip

Ballinderry Park, County Galway has featured here in the past (see Sturdy as an Oak « The Irish Aesthete) and indeed features in the recently published The Irish Country House: A New Vision (see A New Vision « The Irish Aesthete), a photograph of its dining room appears on the cover. Very sadly, Ballinderry Park’s owner, George Gossip, died recently, a great loss to anyone who was interested or engaged in the preservation of Ireland’s architectural heritage. 




Castlecarra, County Mayo

George and his late wife Susan (who died in 2015) were responsible for rescuing and restoring Ballinderry Park from what would otherwise have almost certainly have been dereliction and loss. Assisted by the late conservation architect Jeremy Williams, they transformed the house from almost ruin into a supremely comfortable home, amusingly described by one visitor as ‘more George than Georgian.’ Prior to moving there and undertaking this very substantial project, they had lived at Tullanisk, County Offaly where they offered accommodation to paying guests: among George’s many talents, he was an outstanding cook, as anyone who enjoyed his hospitality can testify. But his great passion was for the country’s historic houses, the people responsible for their creation and the fates that have befallen so many of them. Rather like Mariga Guinness before him, he loved setting out on expeditions to clamber around sites and see what might be found. The Irish Aesthete has experience of many such outings, often begun in the morning with the preparation of a picnic – usually eaten on the remaining stones of a long-fallen building – before the route was planned and the journey began. Our last such excursion was in July when the two of us left Ballinderry to drive through East Galway and then up to County Mayo where he wanted me to see the location of a once-great but now lost property at Castlecarra which had belonged to the Lynch family and which George believed had been built in the last quarter of the 17th century. As the pictures above indicate, little now remains here (as early as 1844 the house and offices were described by Samuel Nicholson as ‘now almost ruins’), except two vast gateposts signalling the entrance to the place, beyond which are various tumbling walls and – a short distance away – what was likely once a series of stable yards. This was one of only six – possibly more – stops made in the course of a day, despite George already being in poor health, evidence of his indefatigable curiosity and enthusiasm. And over the next week, he sent a stream of emails with further information and possible leads to find out more about Castlecarra and its history. For decades, he had been taking photographs of historic buildings, in a variety of structural conditions, and had thus built up a substantial collection: recently, these were place in the care of the Irish Architectural Archive, although unfortunately his intention to catalogue them did not come to pass. Another incomplete project on which he had been working for some time was a book chronicling Ireland’s sporting lodges, about which the two of us had many conversations. Sooner or later, one hopes, the book will be published.




Ballinderry Park, County Galway

George’s other important role was acting as a key figure, along with Susan Kellett of Enniscoe House, County Mayo (see Comfortable in its Own Skin « The Irish Aesthete) in the establishment in 2008 of Historic Houses of Ireland (originally Irish Historic Houses Association), as a registered Irish Charity. Founded with the active encouragement of the Government at the time, the HHI represents private owners of Irish country houses and supports them with the ongoing responsibilities and challenges that come with ownership of such properties. In doing so, the organisation effectively represents the interests of all such owners and houses, whether or not they are members, in a manner that previously did not exist. The Irish Aesthete has always been a keen supporter of the HHI, and indeed in 2020 established an annual prize to be given to a member in recognition of work undertaken to preserve this important part of our national heritage (see A Worthy Recipient « The Irish Aesthete for last year’s recipient). George had a clear vision of what the HHI could be and do, and was determined that it become a significant presence in Ireland and thereby better ensure the survival of our country houses. For this and so much else, we are all much indebted to him. He was, indeed, a very good Gossip.

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The House on the Hill



Salthill is well-named as it sits on high ground overlooking the harbour at Mountcharles, County Donegal. Of two storeys over raised basement and five bays, the house has a central pedimented breakfront with Diocletian window. The building is thought to date from the 1770s and may have been designed by Dublin-based architect Thomas Ivory, commissioned by the Conyngham family who owned a large estate in this part of the country, since for many years it served as a residence for their agent. More recently the present owners of the property have created extensive gardens to the rear of the house.



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Undaunted and Vigorous Still


‘Dunloe Castle stands on a bold promontory overlooking the river near the bridge. It has a worn, but wild and hardy look about it, as if it had suffered much at the hand of time, but remained undaunted and vigorous still. The view from the castle is most exquisite, and the row down the river will be found to be not the least interesting portion of the excursion…The castle has been kept in good repair by its various proprietors. Its position was, in former days, a strong one; and it was doubtless erected for the purpose of commanding the river and the pass into the mountains. In the time of Henry VIII and Elizabeth, it frequently stood the brunt of warfare; and in 1641 it was besieged and nearly demolished by the Parliamentary forces under Ludlow.’
From The Lakes of Killarney by Robert Michael Ballantyne (1865)




‘Let no one leave Killarney without rowing a mile or two down the Laune and visiting Dunloe Castle by water; – as we did in the “gloaming” of a summer evening, when the lake was calm – the grey fly floating on its surface, and the salmon and trout springing from the waters…but here stands the Castle on its bold promontory above the river – a firm, fearless looking keep, approached by a steep hill-road, recalling both by its shape and situation, one of the Rhine towers. Land, by all means and, as it is permitted, ascend; and passing through a turngate, walk along the terrace, which commands a view of the magnificent slopes, which a little pains might easily convert into hanging gardens. The greater part of the kitchen-offices were burnt some years ago, so that the dwelling-castle has a gaunt and isolated appearance, in accordance with the wild mountain scenery.’
From A Week in Killarney by Mr and Mrs S.C. Hall (1843)




‘As we drive along, behold beneath us a view of Dunloe Castle, the remains of an old fortress, that, like Ross Castle, was used by the turbulent chiefs of the country as a place of strength and security. It suffered many vicissitudes and, at last, during the reign of Oliver Cromwell, was partly demolished by bombardment. It has been, by some late repairs, converted into a very romantic residence by the late Major Mahoney, whose politeness and attention every stranger was sure to experience. There is an embattled walk around the top, from which an extensive view of the Lake and the surrounding mountains may be taken, if the stranger deem it of sufficient importance to pause for it.’
From A New Guide to the Scenery of Killarney by D.E. Fitzpatrick (1845)


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The Place of Pleasant Aspect



Popular belief proposes that Balleighan Abbey, County Donegal was founded close to the eastern shore of Lough Swilly by Hugh Dubh O’Donnell at the beginning of the 16th century. In fact the building is older than that and while it may have been associated with the O’Donnells, the place was a church of the Third Order of the Franciscans who had a friary directly opposite on the lough’s western side. The location’s name derives from the Irish The name is derived the Irish ‘Baile-aighidh-chaoin’, meaning the place of pleasant aspect, although this was hard to appreciate when the Irish Aesthete visited on a dank, grey afternoon. With little surviving decoration, the roofless church retains a singularly fine 15th century window with sinuous tracery, today mostly appreciated by cattle grazing in the surrounding fields. 



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Twins in Trinity



In Trinity College Dublin’s Front (otherwise known as Parliament) Square, two buildings with identical facades look across at each other. Planned in the mid-1770s by Sir William Chambers, but executed by Christopher Myers (and then completed after the latter’s death by his son Graham Myers), that to the north holds the college Chapel, that to the south the Theatre, now Examination Hall. Both are of five bays, with the three centre bays featuring a ground-floor arcade supporting Corinthian columns below a substantial pediment. While these are faced in Portland stone, the flanking single bay three storey offices are of granite ashlar. Yet, while the exteriors look the same, the interiors are very differen






Built 1777-86, and therefore preceding the nearby Chapel by a decade, Trinity College Dublin’s Theatre, now Examination Hall, is a five-bay hall with elliptical groin vaulted ceiling and plasterwork created by stuccodore Michael Stapleton. In a gallery above the facade arcade can be seen a gilded organ case was made in 1684 by Lancelot Pease, while the chandelier at the south end of the hall formerly hung in the Irish House of Commons. The walls here are hung with a series of portraits commissioned from Robert Home in1782, their frames carved by Richard Cranfield. However, much space on the west side is taken up by a monument to Dr Richard Baldwin, Provost of the college from 1717 until his death in 1758’ this superlative work, dating from 1781, was designed by Christopher Hewetson. Incorporating Italian Africano marble salvaged from an ancient Roman architectural site and a sarcophagus of Porto Venere Marble with gilt bronze feet, the white marble figures were carved in Rome and installed by Edward Smyth.






Soon after the theatre was finished, work began on the college’s chapel, completed in 1798. As with the other building, this is a five-bay hall, although somewhat longer and narrower in shape, with a bowed organ gallery at the south end (carved by Richard Cranfield) and an elliptical apse at the north end.
Between the nave’s arched openings, some glazed, some blind, paired and fluted Ionic pilasters lead the eye to the coffered ceiling with its rich plasterwork by Michael Stapleton. Additional light is provided by semi-circular clerestory windows above the cornice. As so often with churches, the building experienced alterations in the 19th century altering its hitherto pure classical character. Stained glass by Clayton & Bell was installed in 1865, depicting scenes of Moses and the Children, the Ransom of the Lord, the Sermon on the Mount, and Christ with the teachers of Law. The polychrome floor tiles were added to designs of John McCurdy, and, in 1872, stained glass windows were installed in the apse and centre, showing the Transfiguration, to designs by Mayer & Company. Nevertheless, even with these changes the chapel offers an example of decorative taste in Ireland on the eve of the Act of Union. 



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The New World in the Old



The Roman Catholic St Joseph’s church in Valleymount, County Wicklow originally dates from 1803 but its granite facade and porch were added around 1835. With pilasters rising above the level parapet to piers topped with slender decorative pinnacles, it is claimed that the porch was either designed by a local priest inspired by churches he had seen on a visit to Malta, or was constructed by parishioners who had visited New Mexico (now Texas). Only the deadening expanse of tarmacadam around the building would remind visitors that they were in Ireland. Inside, the side aisles hold a two pairs of bejewelled stained glass windows from the Harry Clarke studios, installed in the 1930s.





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In a Disused Graveyard


The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never any more the dead.




The verses in it say and say:
‘The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay.’

So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can’t help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
What is it men are shrinking from?




It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.

In a Disused Graveyard by Robert Frost
Photographs of St Mary’s church and graveyard, Castlehill, County Down

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A Swifte Burial



Located beside a now-disused church and within an old graveyard at Castlerickard, County Meath is this curious limestone pyramid, each of its steeply pitched sides carrying a raised diamond. One of them carries the name Swifte, indicating that the monument commemorates a member of the family of that name, possibly Godwin Swifte who died in 1815 and owned a property in this part of the country, the picturesquely named Lionsden, which still stands. Godwin Swifte belonged to a branch of the same family as Jonathan Swift, the famous Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. 



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A Vanishing World


Many people will be familiar with the photographs taken during the last century by the Jesuit priest, Fr Francis Browne, both those of the Titanic (which he boarded for its maiden voyage before disembarking prior to its ill-fated voyage across the Atlantic Ocean) and those depicting everyday life in Ireland. Much less well-known are the series of country house pictures that Browne began to take from the late 1940s until a few years before his death in 1960. In 1947 he received the first of a series of commissions from the Irish Tatler & Sketch, which described itself as ‘Ireland’s Premier Social & Sporting Monthly.’ Many of these pieces featured not only photographs by Browne but also texts which he had written.
No information has been found to explain how the Irish Tatler & Sketch initiated contact with Browne, but by then, thanks to his work with the various other organisations, he was well-known as a photographer of exceptional ability. Furthermore, he had already been taking pictures of historic houses for some time, since during this period quite a number of them were occupied by Catholic religious orders. His earliest images of Rathfarnham Castle, for example, date from 1920, just seven years after the building had been bought by the Jesuit order. Similarly, he often photographed Emo Court in the years after it was acquired by the same order, for many of which he lived in the building.
However, Browne now began to take pictures of houses still in secular hands. In April 1945, in a letter to his Provincial Superior, he explained that earlier that year, while in Portlaw, County Waterford to give a Triduum (a Catholic religious observance lasting three days), he had received permission to visit nearby Curraghmore, home to the de la Poer Beresfords, Marquises of Waterford. ‘I did so,’ he elaborated, ‘because I am collecting a set of Georgian Houses, & Curraghmore was on the list given me by the Georgian Society.’ It is unclear which organisation he means, since the original Georgian Society had come to an end in 1913 and its eventual successor, the Irish Georgian Society, was not established until 1958; it may be that he was using the fifth volume of the Georgian Society Records (published 1913) which contained a catalogue of important country houses throughout the country, or else perhaps another work, Georgian Mansions in Ireland by Thomas Sadleir and Page L. Dickinson, which appeared in 1915 and which devoted several pages to Curraghmore.   In any case, it says a great deal about Fr Browne’s character and a reflection of his personal charm that he was able to gain access to so many houses at a time when they were still in private hands and not open to the public.

Killeen Castle, County Meath

The first country house photographed by Browne to appear in the Irish Tatler & Sketch was Shelton Abbey, County Wicklow, home for some 200 years to the Howards, Earls of Wicklow. By now it was home to the last of the family to live there, William Howard, eighth earl who in 1932 had converted to Catholicism, much to the disgust of his father (seemingly, he was appalled at the idea of Shelton Abbey’s heir attending the same church as the servants). Browne had visited the house in November 1946, but the following April he sought permission to go there again, as Lord Wicklow had recently told him ‘that owing to his circumstance, he proposes utilising Shelton Abbey as a kind of hotel or “Country Club”.’ He therefore wanted Browne to return to the house and take further photographs ‘before the necessary alterations are made.’ The building was then still filled with treasures accumulated by generations of Howards, many of them captured in situ by Browne as he and his camera went from room to room. He visited in good time because the hotel venture was not a success and after just three years Lord Wicklow was obliged to sell Shelton Abbey’s contents in a spectacular auction that lasted for 13 days. The great majority of lots went to overseas buyers and left Ireland, making Browne’s pictures priceless as a guide to how the house once looked. Shelton Abbey is today an open prison and much of its interior badly affected by institutional use.



Rockingham. County Roscommon

Some of the houses photographed by Browne have either since been demolished, such as Rockingham and Frenchpark, both in County Roscommon, or left a ruin, like Killeen Castle, County Meath. A number of others that he visited – the likes of Adare Manor, County Limerick and Dromoland Castle, County Clare – are now hotels. Many more, among them Knocklofty, County Tipperary and Glananea, County Westmeath, have changed hands on more than one occasion and long lost their original contents. Happily, the story of what has happened since that time is not all bad. Some of the houses Browne visited, not least Castletown, County Kildare and Malahide Castle, County Dublin, are now in public ownership and open to visitors, while the Ormond Castle, County Tipperary has, since passing into the care of the Office of Public Works, benefitted from an extensive programme of restoration. And a few of the houses shown over the coming pages remain in the same hands and have experienced relatively little change, among them the aforementioned Curraghmore and Lismore Castle, both in County Waterford, and Dunsany Castle, County Meath.

Shelton Abbey, County Wicklow

While Browne photographed more than 50 country houses, he did not cover all of Ireland. Had he been a free agent, he might have taken pictures of a great many other places but he could only go where he was permitted to go by his superiors in the Jesuit order; many visits to these historic properties were tagged on to other trips undertaken in the course of his work as a Catholic priest. In consequence, there are omissions. An obvious absence is Northern Ireland which, in the decades after Independence, Browne does not appear to have visited. Most of the houses he photographed were in the east, the Midlands and the south. Other than the two Roscommon properties already mentioned, the West is unrepresented, and, aside from two houses in County Louth and one in County Monaghan, he took no pictures of houses north of Dublin.
These gaps are regrettable but, given the photographer’s circumstances, understandable. We must be grateful that Browne managed to visit so many old houses and record them for posterity before the majority underwent irrevocable change. Not all of them feature in a new book, A Vanishing World: The Irish Country House Photographs of Father Browne, published this week. Limitations of space and the desire to give adequate space to the houses included in the present work means many more had to be left out. In a small number of cases, the pictures are not of the best quality or of insufficient number to merit their presence. In others, the houses have already been well documented, and images of them are easily available to anyone interested. Pictures of a few more are included in the book’s introduction, such as Mespil House in Dublin, home for many years of the pioneering artist Sarah Purser, which Browne photographed just a couple of months after her death in August 1943. Within a decade, the mid-18th century building had been demolished, although thankfully three of its remarkable ceilings, attributed to the stuccodore Barthelemy Cramillion, were salvaged; two of them are now in Dublin Castle, and one in Aras an Uachtaráin. Then there was Lamberton, County Laois, a large two-storey Georgian houses which Browne visited in January 1944, just a few months before it was stripped of everything worth salvaging and then demolished. Heywood, also in Laois, had been acquired by the Salesian order in 1941 and Browne photographed it on two occasions, in July 1943 and September 1945. Again, these images are important because in January 1950 the house was gutted by fire and later levelled.
After the pictures of Shelton Abbey appeared in the Irish Tatler & Sketch in 1947, further examples of Browne’s country house photographs continued to appear in the magazine for a number of years, as they did in other publications, including Ireland of the Welcomes in 1953-54, and then The Irish Digest. By then he had stopped travelling so much – he was, after all, in his mid-seventies – and would lead a more retired life until his death in 1960. Like the rest of his output, for a long time his photographs of Irish country house were forgotten and even when other pictures had been rediscovered and published, this particular group has not been given much attention. This new publication therefore serves two purposes: it allows us to see how these buildings looked in the middle of the last century and it gives us an opportunity to celebrate once more the outstanding talents of Fr Francis Browne, photographer.

Frenchpark, County Roscommon

A Vanishing World: The Irish Country House Photographs of Father Browne is published by Messenger Publications

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