Category Archives: Architectural History

The Bishop’s Legacy



After Monday’s tale of Riverstown, County Cork, here are the scant remains of another, slightly earlier property built by another member of the same family. In 1710 Dr Peter Browne, former Provost of Trinity College Dublin, was appointed Church of Ireland Bishop of the United Dioceses of Cork and Ross. Ten years later, he acquired some 118 acres of land to the immediate south-east of the city, with the intention of constructing there ‘a good, substantial and convenient dwelling house and a chapel thereunto adjoining together with suitable offices.’ Named Bishopstown and finished in 1726 at a cost of more than £2,000, he created this property and surrounding demesne to serve as “a fit and convenient residence for himself and his successors, the bishops of Cork and Ross”.  The adjacent chapel was consecrated in 1730. Alas, his successors failed to appreciate this legacy and already by 1792 the house at Bishopstown was described as being ‘in a state of decay and totally unfit for the residence of the bishop.’ In the early 1830s the place was leased to a farmer and then in 1878 the Ecclesiastical Commissioners sold the land and buildings. It passed through various hands before being bought by Cork Corporation about half a century ago. Many of the buildings were then in a better condition than is now the case (and some of them have been demolished over the intervening years). What remains is a former farmhouse incorporating an early 18th century limestone doorcase retrieved from the since-lost mansion, and the skeletal remains of the chapel (see below). In the immediate vicinity, jostling for attention with a children’s playground, are a pair of small, three-arched bridges and fragments of a circular battlemented shell house, thought perhaps to have been built during the episcopacy of Robert Clayton, the bishop here 1735-45. Bishopstown today is a heavily-developed suburb of Cork city.


Rescued from Ruin


The extraordinary work of sibling stuccodores Paolo and Filippo Lafranchini, born in the Italian-speaking Swiss canton of Ticino but resident in Ireland for many years, has featured here before (see, among others, To the Muses « The Irish Aesthete and Exuberance « The Irish Aesthete). A relatively little known example of their skills can be found in Riverstown, a house to the immediate north-east of Cork city. The land on which the property stands came into the possession of the Browne family in the second half of the 17th century, but assumed much of its present appearance after 1733 when it became the residence of Dr Jemmet Browne, a Church of Ireland clergyman who would serve successively as Bishop of Killaloe, Dromore, Cork and Ross, Elphin and finally Archbishop of Tuam, which position he held at the time of his death in 1782. The earliest known reference to Riverstown is found in Charles Smith’s The Ancient And Present State of the County and City of Cork, published in 1750, where it is described as ‘a pleasant seat of the Lord Bishop of Cork. The house is beautified with several curious pieces of stucco, performed by the Francinis, brothers.’ We know, therefore, that the work executed in the saloon at Riverstown was carried out either before Browne became Bishop of Cork (1745) or very soon afterwards. And that he continued to carry out improvements on the building in the years after Smith’s book appeared, since a hopper is dated 1753. The exterior gives little idea of the rich decoration inside. The entrance front is modest, of two storeys and five bays, although what was the garden front is more substantial, running to seven bays and three storeys. The north end of the house the gable ends were replaced by a pair of full-height canted bays, that to the front climbing an additional storey, this last alteration believed to date from c.1830

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It tells us a great deal about this country’s cosmopolitan culture in the 18th century that a Church of Ireland clergyman – and one who rose to become an archbishop – should have decorated his private residence with pagan iconography. The saloon in Riverstown includes a series of eight panels across three walls, all of them including figures. The fourth wall has three windows and between these are a pair of mirror set in elaborate frames. The ceiling is also covered in stuccowork, centred on an oval frame derived from Nicolas Poussin’s Le Temps soustrait La  Vérité aux atteints de L’Envie et de la Discorde, painted in 1641 for Cardinal Richelieu and now in the Louvre. As for the figurative wall panels,for a long time thought as being random, the source for these was identified by Joseph McDonnell in 1991 as being taken directly from the Roman antiquarian Paolo Alessandro Maffei’s edition of Leonardo Agostini’s Gemme Antiche Figurate, published 1707-09. Beginning with the chimneypiece, the panel above it depicts the mythological Roman figure of Marcus Curtius on horseback, while next to it is one showing Aeneas carrying his father Anchises. The third panel shows Liberty, followed by Ceres and then Fides Publica, Fortuna and Cincinnatus. Finally, the panel at the far end of the room and facing the chimneypiece depicts Roma mounted in a chariot. That chimneypiece is not the original one (which is now in a first floor bedroom) but a replacement installed during restoration work in the 1960s). As already mentioned, between the three windows are two framed mirrors (still holding their original glass) surrounded by elaborate plasterwork incorporating flowers, foliage and female busts. The opposite wall is centred on a door, its frame with a finely carved broken pediment. To the north of the saloon are a pair of bow-ended drawing rooms, again much of their present decoration dating from the 1960s restoration of Riverstown. 






Riverstown remained in the possession of the Browne family until the middle of the last century but by the 1950s it stood empty and the threat of irreparable deterioration seemed so likely that moulds of the saloon were made by the Office of Public Works; these were installed in the Irish President’s residence Áras an Uachtaráin. Not long afterwards Riverstown and its surrounding land were bought by a Cork market gardener, John Dooley who in the mid-1960s collaborated with the Irish Georgian Society on restoring the building, thanks to donations from the public. By the end of 1965 Riverstown’s saloon had been restored to its former beauty, the initial work costing £717. The Dooleys were sufficiently inspired by this initiative to undertaken further work on the house and in the IGS’s January-March 1970 Bulletin, it was reported that one of the house’s two late 18th century drawing rooms ‘has been given a new dado, architraves, chimney-piece, overdoors and overmantel.’  Ten years after the society’s initial involvement, still more work had been achieved as a feature in the Cork Evening Echo noted, with the second drawing room walls covered in green silk and hung with 18th century pictures. Riverstown continues to be home to the Dooley family.

New Purpose Sought


Last November, the Connacht Tribune reported there had been no expressions of interest in acquiring Garbally Court, a large early 19th century house on the outskirts of Ballinasloe, County Galway, even though it was being offered for just €1. More than two years earlier, the building’s present owner – the Roman Catholic Diocese of Clonfert – had offered to transfer Garbally Court along with some of the surrounding grounds to the authority for that nominal sum of a single euro. However, a commissioned Consultants’ Report had suggested expenditure of some €4.2 million would be needed just to stabilise the house and bring it up to a reasonable standard. While elected representatives of the area were keen for the acquisition to go ahead, in the hope that Garbally Court could be turned into a tourist attraction, thereby bringing business into the area, the County Council Executive’s advice to the group which needed to approve such matters prior to a full council meeting was that upgrading costs were prohibitive, even before running costs and possible future uses were taken into account. In November, the council’s director of services was quoted as advising councillors that the building ‘is not in our ownership and nor are we willing to take possession but the door is always open for anyone to come in and renovate the property for whatever purpose. But so far, nobody has come next nor near us.’ 




Garbally Court was built for Richard Le Poer Trench, second Earl of Clancarty. The Trenches claim descent from Frederic de La Tranche, his name supposedly derived from the family’s origins in the town of La Tranche in Poitou. Monsieur de La Tranche is believed to have left France as a result of religious persecution and settled in Northumberland in 1574. One of his sons, James Trench, a clergyman, settled in Ireland, becoming rector of Clongell, County Meath. His only child, Anna, married her first cousin Frederick Trench; it appears that he was responsible for initially buying the land in East Galway that formed the basis of the Garbally estate. The couple’s son, another Frederick, continued to acquire more land, especially in the aftermath of the Williamite Wars. In the next generation. Richard Trench married an heiress, Frances Power, in 1732; she brought further wealth and property to the family. Their eldest son, William Trench sat in the Irish House of Commons like his father before him, before being created first Baron Kilconnel (1797), then Viscount Dunlo (1801) and finally Earl of Clancarty (1803). He and his wife Anne Gardiner had no less than 19 children, their eldest son Richard succeeding to the titles and estates on his father’s death in 1805. The second earl was a politician and diplomat of considerable ability. After sitting in the Irish House of Commons until the dissolution of the Irish Parliament in 1800, and then in the English House of Commons until he became a member of the peerage, after which he sat at Westminster as an Irish representative peer. Close friendship with Castlereagh meant that after the latter became foreign secretary in 1812, the earl was entrusted with a succession of crucial diplomatic missions, attending the Congress of Vienna with the rank of plenipotentiary. He served twice as Britain’s ambassador to the Netherlands, that country’s king making him Marquis of Heusden in 1818; following his retirement as ambassador, he was also created Viscount Clancarty in the English peerage in 1823. But thereafter, and following Castlereagh’s death, he largely withdrew from political life and turned his attention to life in County Galway, where work was well underway on building Garbally Court. 




As mentioned, the present Garbally Court dates from the early 19th century. Its predecessor on the site had been badly damaged by fire in 1798, but it would be more than 20 years before work on a new house began. In 1819 the second earl commissioned designs from English architect Thomas Cundy, best-known for acting as surveyor of the Grosvenor family’s London estates and being involved in the initial development of Belgravia in the years prior to his death in 1825. Garbally Court is Cundy’s only work in Ireland, although he did design a number of lodges in various architectural styles for Coolmore, County Cork (see Trans-Atlantic Links « The Irish Aesthete) none of which were actually built. The architect, like others at the time, produced work in whatever style best suited his client. Hawarden Castle in Wales, for example, is – as its name indicates – in the Gothic manner, but Garbally Court is austerely neoclassical. Square in plan, the house is of two storeys and eleven bays, the entrance front relieved by a single-storey Doric porte-cochère, while the rear elevation has a single storey, three-bay bow. Regular and segmental pediments alternate over the ground floor windows. Originally the house was constructed around a central open courtyard but this was later covered and made into a picture gallery. The earl’s descendants continued to own Garbally Court until 1921 when, along with the surrounding demesne, it was sold to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Clonfert for £6,750. The following year the diocesan boys’ school, St. Joseph’s College, moved to the site and constructed classrooms and other ancillary buildings close to the house. A boarding school was run here until 2008 when it closed down and since then a new school has also been built, hence the need to find fresh purpose – and a new owner – for Garbally Court. What both might look like remains to be seen.

For what Purpose?



Located on Patrick’s Hill and above a stone outcrop in the village of Dunfanaghy, County Donegal, this crenellated little tower’s origins are unclear. While it does not appear on the original Ordnance Survey map of the late 1830s, it is shown on Griffith’s Valuation map a couple of decades later. Was it constructed as a folly or a lookout post with views across the local Sheephaven Bay? And who commissioned it? Set on a plinth and of rubble stone, the structure has a pointed arch opening on the west side and square-headed window opening to the north, with an infilled opening on the south face. It holds one small room: what can its purpose have been?

Recalling Lost Houses


In his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland published in 1837, Samuel Lewis wrote of Kilcommon, County Mayo that the old church here, ‘was a chapel of ease, built in 1688 by Archbishop Vesey, who was buried in it, and was made the parish church on the church of Kilcommon becoming ruinous. The present church, which is also in Hollymount, was built in 1816, the late Board of First Fruits having granted a loan of £1000 ; it is a handsome building, with a cast iron spire, and is fitted up with English oak.’ The church, dedicated to King Charles the Martyr, is of cruciform shape and constructed of limestone ashlar; as Lewis noted, rather unusually, the spire is made of cast-iron. Services continued to be held here until November 1959 and the roof removed four years later. Seemingly the doorcase went to Ballintober Abbey and a wall monument remounted in St Mary’s Church, Ballinrobe, both in County Mayo, while the English oak mentioned by Lewis was repurposed in St Paul’s Church, Glenageary, County Dublin and the east window moved to St John’s Church, Lurgan, County Armagh.





In the same entry, Lewis notes that the family vaults of the Binghams, Lords Clanmorris, along with monuments of the Lindsey and Ruttledge families are to be found in the graveyard of King Charles the Martyr. The Binghams had settled in this part of the county in the mid-17th century and there built a house called Newbrook; it was accidentally destroyed in a fire in 1837 and not rebuilt. The monument, to the immediate east of the church, commemorates John Bingham who in 1800 agreed to surrender to the government the two parliamentary seats he controlled in the local borough in exchange for £8,000 and a peerage (for more on this, see Where Turkeys Voted for Christmas « The Irish Aesthete). Visitors to the graveyard note that the tomb is ‘Sacred to the memory of The Right Honorable John Charles Smith de Burgh Bingham, Lord Baron Clanmorris of Newbrook in the County of Mayo, A NOBLEMAN distinguished for the possession of those many eminent virtues which adorn life whether we consider him in the Character of a HUSBAND, FATHER, LANDLORD or FRIEND.’ Another side of the same monument observes that also interred here is Lord Clanmorris’s daughter Caroline Bingham, who died at the age of 15 in April 1821, a month before her father. The Lindsey family settled in the area in 1757 when Thomas Lindsey married Frances Vesey, a granddaughter of John Vesey who had built a house at Hollymount which she duly inherited; the family remained on the estate there until the start of the last century when it was sold to the Congested Districts’ Board. As for the Ruttledges, they lived at Bloomfield, a large house built c.1776. The tomb here commemorates Elizabeth, wife of Robert Ruttledge and daughter of Francis Knox of Rappa Castle, elsewhere in the county. According to the inscription, ‘Her engaging mildness unceasing humanity and warm affection endeared her to all her acquaintance and her uniform and unobtrusive piety together with the unremitting firmness with which she performed all her duties during a life of 56 years afforded them the consoling and confident hope that her soul fled to that place where the spirits of the just are made perfect.’





As already mentioned, the Bingham’s home, Newbrook, was destroyed by fire in 1837 and never rebuilt. Hollymount, originally built by Archbishop Vesey at the start of the 18th century but substantially altered in the 19th, was eventually inherited by Mary Lindsey who in 1885 at the age of 19 married Heremon FitzPatrick; his sister Mary FitzPatrick, better known as Patsy, was one of the great beauties of the late 19th century who at the age of 16 had an affair with the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) before being hastily married to William Cornwallis-West, with whom she had three children. Her brother Heremon, who had assumed the surname Lindsey, remained in possession of Hollymount until 1922 when it was sold; the house is now a ruin. Bloomfield, home of the Ruttledges, was similarly sold in the early 1920s, acquired by the Land Commision and subsequently damaged by fire, it is now a ruin. As for Rappa Castle, childhood home of Elizabeth Ruttledge, it too has become a roofless shell (see Crumbling is not an Instant’s Act « The Irish Aesthete). So this collection of tombs in the graveyard of a derelict church is all that remains to recall a series of once powerful families in County Mayo.

In Praise of Folly




It is unclear when this folly in the grounds of Ballycumber House, County Offaly was constructed. It may date from the mid-18th century when the property’s then-owner Warneford Armstrong carried out alterations to the main building, or perhaps from the early 19th century during the time of his grandson John Warneford Armstrong. The latter travelled extensively abroad and in her book Flights of Fancy: Follies, Families and Demesnes in Offaly, Rachel McKenna describes the folly as ‘a curious structure, circular in plan with soaring buttresses, perhaps reminiscent of great cathedrals seen on distant shores.’ Set on an artificial mound to the north-east of the house, there are tall arched openings between all the stepped and pinnacled buttresses except for one section of solid wall; this originally held a fireplace to warm the interior. Presumably there was a roof, likely domed, but this has entirely gone. The building was restored some years ago by the Follies Trust.



Awaiting Attention



Lucan House, County Dublin was discussed here a few weeks ago (see Addio del Passato « The Irish Aesthete). As noted then, the property, having been under the care of the Italian government for almost 80 years, has now been taken over by the local council. Included in the demesne is not only the house but a number of other significant buildings, including the remains of a mediaeval church. This is located to the immediate east and within sight of the former Italian ambassador’s residence. The church is recorded as being in existence since 1219, some 15 years after the manor of Lucan had been granted to the Norman Waris de Peche. He was probably also responsible for developing the original castle, thought to have stood in the vicinity of the present house, and close to the banks of the river Liffey.






The church of St Mary in Lucan was granted by Waris de Peche to the Augustinian Priory of St Catherine, located on the other side of the Liffey. By 1332, St. Catherine’s had passed to St Thomas’s Abbey on the outskirts of Dublin and remained under its control until the suppression of religious houses in the second quarter of the 16th century. St Mary’s church was then acquired, along with the castle, by William Sarsfield and appears to have remained in a good state of repair until at least the late 1500s. However, in 1630 the chancel was described as ruinous and has remained so ever since. Constructed of rubble limestone, the building consists of a nave and chancel, the former having lost its north wall. Inside the chancel are a number of tombs erected by later occupants of Lucan House, a particularly poignant one commemorating Nicholas Peter Conway Colthurst who died in November 1820 aged six weeks, the tomb noting ‘It pleased Almighty God to take him from his afflicted parents after four days illness.’ On the north-east corner of the building is a three-storey tower, sometimes mistakenly called Lucan Castle. Most likely this was erected in the 15th century as a residence for the clergy serving St Mary’s, during a period when civil disturbances meant some protection from attack – even for priests – was considered necessary. 






On the opposite side of the parkland around Lucan House and quite different in character can be found another building in need of attention: an eighteenth century Gothick bathhouse. Thought to date from the mid-1780s, and therefore perhaps constructed while Agmondisham Vesey was still alive, it was constructed during the period in which the local sulphurous waters made Lucan popular as a spa. However, the limestone rubble bathhouse, complete with whimsically irregular form and bellcote, was for private rather than public use. It sits at the end of a long tree-lined avenue on a site above the river, views of which were offered by a tall arched opening on the north side. This opening gives access to a vaulted antechamber, warmed by a central fireplace on the south wall, the pointed arch stone surround looking as though it may have been taken from an older building, perhaps St Mary’s church? There are arched openings on both the western (external) and eastern (internal) walls of the chamber, the latter leading to the bathhouse itself, a sunken pool with a series of shallow steps. Like other buildings in the grounds of the property, the bathhouse is now in need of restoration, along with the stableyard and a pair of charming Gothick lodges which lie immediately inside the gates. All of this now awaits the local council. One must hope that the authority appreciates the importance of the site’s architectural legacy, and affords it due respect. 


An Evocative Spot



A rare occasion when Foster Place, Dublin is not cluttered with parked cars. This narrow cul-de-sac off Dame Street is located to the immediate west of the Bank of Ireland (formerly Ireland’s House of Commons) on College Green. The space was created in 1787 when buildings on this side were demolished to create a new entrance to the House of Commons designed by Robert Parke (the equivalent on the east side, on Westmoreland Street was designed two years earlier by James Gandon) and distinguished by a massive tetrastyle Ionic portico. At the north end of the place, and in the aftermath of the former parliament being given new purpose, Francis Johnston designed an armoury/guardhouse that sympathetically replicates many of the features of Pearce’s great building. On the west side, and directly facing the Commons entrance, originally stood Daly’s Clubhouse, the most fashionable gentleman’s club in Georgian Dublin; in the 19th century, this became yet another bank and was subject to alterations, notably George Papworth’s porch of c.1840. Deserving -indeed demanding – pedestrianisation, Foster Place holds potential to be one of the most evocative spots in Dublin.

Where Turkeys Voted for Christmas


Like their English equivalent, for many centuries Ireland’s Houses of Parliament lacked purpose-built quarters, instead meeting in various locations, not least a hall in Dublin Castle. However, following Charles II’s restoration to the throne in 1660, the government leased Chichester House, a residence in central Dublin dating from the reign of Elizabeth I which in the early 17th century had been used as the country’s law courts. Overlooking Hoggen (subsequently College Green) and adjacent to Trinity College Dublin, despite its eminent position the building soon proved to be unsatisfactory for its new purpose and by 1728 a decision had been taken that it should be replaced. This was despite, or perhaps because, of the country’s economic circumstances then being in a poor condition: Edward McParland has proposed that William Conolly, then Speaker of the House of Commons and likely one of the driving forces behind the project (although he died while work on the site was ongoing) would have seen the new parliament building’s construction as reflationary; in 1721 George Berkeley, specifically mentioning such an undertaking, argued that it would ‘employ many Hands’ and at the same time ‘keep the Mony circulating at home…’ Likewise, when finished, Robert Howard, Bishop of Elphin, while thinking the Houses of Parliament were ‘too fine for us,’ consoled himself with the thought that at least ‘it hath chiefly employed our own hands.’ Once it had been decided to embark on this enterprise, progress was fast. In January 1728 a building committee was empowered to receive plans, and less than a month later it sought these from Edward Lovett Pearce: he submitted these in early March. The foundation stone was laid in February 1729 and by November of that year, ‘the Walls and Roof…are now near finished and compleat.’ In October 1731 the two houses of the Irish Parliament assembled for the first time in their newly completed chambers. 





Described by Christine Casey as ‘arguably the most accomplished public set-piece of the Palladian style in these islands,’ Edward Lovett Pearce’s building was also the first purpose-built bicameral assembly in Europe. Overlooking College Green, the former Houses of Parliament has a forecourt dominated by a towering Ionic colonnade of Portland stone in front of Granite walls. The only original decoration to this austere facade is the royal coat of arms set into the tympanum (the three figures above, of Hibernia flanked by Fidelity and Commerce, were added in the early 19th century after the building had changed purposes). There were separate entrances for the Houses of Commons and Lords respectively and while the former chamber no longer exists ((it was, in any case, badly damaged by fire in 1792 before being dismantled barely a decade later), the latter has survived with relatively few changes. In Francis G James’s Lords of the Ascendancy, his book on the Irish House of Lords 1600-1800, the author notes that the number of this country’s peers was never very great. In the first three quarters of the 18th century, there were between 100 and 150 families possessing Irish titles, but James notes that only 60 percent of these spent a substantial amount of time in Ireland (some of them had Irish titles but no land or connections here, others were Roman Catholics or émigrés, unable or unwilling to take the Oath of Allegiance to the Crown). Accordingly, the number of peers attending the Irish House of Lords was often considerably less than 100, to which can be added the 22 Lords Spiritual (four Archbishops and 18 Bishops) who also had a right to seats in the upper house, although again many of them did not attend regularly. This explains the relatively small size of the House of Lords, since it never had to hold too many people. The room is tripartite, with an entrance area, the main chamber and the throne apse. Tall and barrel-vaulted with a coffered ceiling, it is lit by thermal windows at either end. The entrance area and apse are entirely panelled in oak with round-headed niches and engaged Ionic columns. The main chamber is panelled in the lower section, above which are giant Corinthian pilasters on either side of walls dominated by a pair of tapestries. Commissioned for the space in 1728, they depict William III at the Battle of the Boyne (above the oak chimneypiece) and the Siege of Derry. When assembled, the peers would have sat here upon benches and wool-sacks. No image of them doing so appears to exist (whereas there is a painting of 1780 by Francis Wheatley that depicts the Irish House of Commons in session). 




In the last quarter of the 18th century, Ireland’s parliament sought to exercise its independent authority to a greater extent than had previously been the case, leading to a series of political crises as the government in London sought to curtail Irish legislators’ power. In 1782, for example, what became known as ‘Grattan’s Parliament’ (after the Irish politician and orator Henry Grattan), succeeded in passing a series of acts that increased Ireland’s legislative and judicial independence. The onset of the French Revolution in 1789 and then an uprising – ultimately abortive but temporarily threatening – within Ireland in 1798, led the British government to fear that the country might escape from its authority altogether. Accordingly the decision was taken to concentrate all legislative power in Westminster, requiring the abolition of a separate Irish parliament. It took a couple of efforts – and a great deal of bribery – to achieve this result, not least because Ireland’s legislators had to approve the loss of their own authority (the phrase about turkeys voting for Christmas comes to mind). The Act of Union, as it was called, initially failed to win approval in the Irish House of Commons in January 1799, but a year (and a number of further bribes) later, the deed was done and the Irish Houses of Parliament ceased, of its own volition, to exist. In his Autobiographical Sketches, Thomas de Quincy recalled being in the House of Lords when it met for the last time, and he observed that when the order of abolition was announced, ‘no audible expression, no buzz nor murmur, nor susurrus even, testified the feelings which, doubtless lay rankling in many bosoms.; They had surrendered their power, he thought, ‘with nothing worth the name of a struggle, and no reward worth the name of an indemnification.’ In the aftermath of this act, an alternative use needed to be found for the splendid building on College Green, and in 1803 it was sold by the government to the Bank of Ireland for £40,000, on the understanding that changes would be made to the interior so that it could not revert to its former purpose. This work was undertaken sympathetically by architect Francis Johnston but while the old House of Commons was broken up, the House of Lords survived, for a long time being used as the bank’s board room. Today it is open to the public during weekday mornings and offers a glimpse into how and where Ireland’s parliament operated in the decades before voting itself out of existence. 

Just Dotey



Further to Monday’s piece on The Argory, County Armagh, (see Where Time Stands Still « The Irish Aesthete), to the north of the house and yards is an expansive lawn overlooking the adjacent river Blackwater. This concludes in a long, curved rampart of rock-faced masonry, at either end of which stands a little, square pavilion. While sloping ground means one sits higher on a bastion above the path below than does the other, the pair otherwise have the same decorative features, such as rusticated quoins and pyramidal roofing with central polygonal chimneystack. They are, to use an Irishism, just dotey*


*Dotey: meaning adorable or charming.