Category Archives: Architectural History

Offering Harbour Views



There appears to be little information about the origins or history of Harbourhill Lodge which, as its name implies, overlooks the little harbour at Newquay, County Clare. Of three bays and two storeys over raised basement, this is one of a number of such properties constructed along the coast in the late 18th/early 19th centuries as occasional homes for landowners whose main estates were elsewhere. It appears on the first Ordnance Survey map (published 1842) and was subsequently listed as being let to the Rev Michael J O’Fea by John Bindon Scott, whose family owned the Cahercon estate at the other end of the county. Ruined in the aftermath of the Great Famine, the Scotts sold up and left Ireland, and it is known that at the beginning of the last century Harbourhill Lodge had become a barracks for the Royal Irish Constabulary. Presumably dereliction began after the War of Independence, and now a hollow shell stands overlooking the harbour at Newquay.


Then and Now

 

In the middle of the 16th century, one Hans Fock moved from the north German city of Lübeck to Estonia, which was then coming under the control of Sweden. Around 100 years later, Queen Christina, shortly before her abdication, elevated Fock’s descendants to the Swedish peerage. After Sweden’s decisive defeat by Peter the Great at the Battle of Poltava in 1709 and the subsequent annexation of Estonia to Russian rule, Henrik Johann Fock moved first to Malmö and then to other parts of Sweden, where through marriage he came into possession of an estate. His heir, Jacob Constantin Fock acquired further property, including land at Råbäck in the county of Skaraborg; it is from this place that the family’s title, Baron de Robeck, derives. His son, Johan Henrik Fock, enjoyed a colourful career, including fighting against the British army during the American War of Independence, before moving to England where in March 1789 he married Anne Fitz-Patrick, heiress to a Galway landowner: four months after the wedding, by an Act of Parliament Fock was naturalised as a British subject under the name ‘John Henry Fock, called Baron de Robeck.’ The couple’s son, John Michael Henry Fock, after serving under General Sir John Moore in the Peninsula Wars, settled in Ireland where in 1820 he married the Hon Margaret Lawless, daughter of Valentine Lawless, second Baron Cloncurry. Famously, her parents had divorced after Lord Cloncurry had successfully sued Sir John Bennett Piers for criminal conversation with his wife. Alas, it proved to be a case of ‘like mother, like daughter’ and in 1828 the de Robecks were divorced after the baroness was found to be having an affair with Lord Sussex Lennox, a younger son of the fourth Duke of Richmond (the couple subsequently went on to marry and have three children). Baron de Robeck married a second time and in due course acquired a house in Dublin’s Merrion Square which at some date in the early 1850s he elaborately redecorated. 






Like its neighbours, 40 Merrion Square dates from the late 18th century and has a three-bay plain brick facade. Its interior was presumably decorated in similar style to those on either side, with neoclassical plasterwork and white marble chimneypieces. However, as mentioned already, the house underwent something of a transformation in the mid-19th century when occupied by the third Baron de Robeck. Here the two first-floor reception rooms were redecorated in elaborate Louis Quinze style, the walls covered with thin panels filled with pendants, urns, leaves, ribbons and musical instruments. Some of the panels were also filled with mirrored glass while pedimented roundels were inserted over the doors and, in the rear room, the central oval of the ceiling painted with a trompe-l’œil sky. The architect responsible for this scheme is unknown, although Christine Casey has suggested the Belfast firm of Lanyon, Lynn & Lanyon since soon afterwards it was commissioned by the fourth baron to design a new country house, Gowran Grange in County Kildare. He may have been inspired to do so by the unfortunate death of his father, the man who had undertaken the refurbishment of 40 Merrion Square. Aside from his residence in Dublin, the third baron also rented Leixlip Castle a few miles outside the city. While staying there in October 1856, he disappeared, his body only being found 11 days later; it would appear the baron, who had gone down to the edge of the river Liffey below the castle to see the Salmon Leap, had slipped and drowned. 






In the period after the third baron’s death, 40 Merrion Square served various purposes. During the First World War, it housed the Irish War Hospital Supply Depot, and at the time of the Easter Rising in 1916, it was transformed by Dr Ella Webb into an emergency field hospital capable of treating 50 patients. Later in the last century, the house’s neighbour, 39 Merrion Square, became the British Embassy until burned by rioters in the aftermath of Derry’s Bloody Sunday in January 1972. By that date, the state-owned Electricity Supply Board already owned 40-43 Merrion Square and the same body subsequently acquired and restored No.39. Various alterations were made to the buildings, not least openings made at different levels, allowing internal movement from one house to the next. A lift shaft was inserted to the rear of No.41 and the party walls between rear gardens largely demolished, with much of the ground covered in frankly prosaic buildings and sub-stations. In 2019 the ESB offered the quintet for sale as a single lot, bought two years later by a development company which has since undertaken a scrupulous restoration of the whole property, so that it now provides flexible workspaces for a variety of businesses. Today’s pictures show the first floor rooms of 40 Merrion Square before and after this recent refurbishment. 

Commodious and Comfortable



‘As soon as I got hither, I ran to my building, and had the pleasure to find every thing very well…The Scaffolding is all down, and the House almost pointed, and It’s figure is vastly more beautiful than I expected it would be. Conceited people may censure its plainness. But I don’t wish it any further ornament than it has. As far as I can judge, the inside will be very commodious, and comfortable. Were it finish’d and season’d, I could wish you here this minute. But I hope we may yet pass some pleasant days together in it.’ Edward Synge, Bishop of Elphin, writing to his daughter Alicia in May 1747 about the new episcopal palace he was then building in Elphin, County Roscommon. Believed to have been designed by Dublin architect Michael Wills, the house was a typical example of Irish Palladianism, with a three-storey, three-bay block flanked by quadrants leading to two-storey wings. The main building survived until 1911 when destroyed by fire and was subsequently demolished, leaving a gap in the centre of the composition. Today the north wing stands a ruin behind a bungalow while the south wing has been restored as a residence. To the left of this are the remains of a Gothick gatelodge and its former gates, presumably the original entrance to the property. 


A Gentle Gothick



Lismacue, County Tipperary, a property which has remained in the same family since the land on which it stands was bought by William Baker in 1704 for £923. Standing at the end of an exceptionally long avenue of lime trees planted c.1760, the building acquired its present, mildly Tudorbethan appearance at the start of the 19th century thanks to Kilkenny architect William Robertson. Of three bays and two storeys, the entrance front’s most notable feature is a single-storey limestone Gothick open porch; a lower service wing to the north concludes in a gable with traceried window, which suggests a chapel (but was probably once a kitchen).  The other two sides looking across the gardens are of five bays, that to the rear having two blind bays as the original intention was for the building to be further extended here. 


Wasting our Resources


According to the 1899 edition of Burke’s Landed Gentry of Ireland, in the 1620s a Dutch general called Wibrantz Olphertzen came to Ireland and settled in County Donegal, buying property from Captain Henry Harte who had been granted lands in this part of the country as a reward for his loyalty to the English government during the Ulster Plantation. Successive generations of the family lived in the same spot, an estate called Ballyconnell which lay just a short distance north of the village of Falcarragh. Invariably the heirs were called either John or, in memory of their Dutch forebear, Wybrants, marrying locally and usually passing their lives unnoticed beyond the immediate area. In the late 1880s, however, Wybrants Olphert, a Justice of the Peace and Deputy Lieutenant of the county, came to international prominence when he began to evict tenants from his estate due to non-payment of rent. Although Olphert’s property ran to 18,133 acres, the poor quality of land here meant it was valued at only 1,802 and in 1885 rent arrears ran to £1,200; his creditors therefore urged him to evict tenants who had failed to pay. However, in 1886, Home Rule supporters initiated the Plan of Campaign, which  called on tenants to withhold payment on estates where owners refused to reduce rents. This is what now took place on the Olphert estate, with the tenants’ cause championed by the local parish priest, James McFadden and his curate Daniel Stephens (both men were jailed for a period). Meanwhile, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Arthur Balfour, provided support for Olphert; at one stage, police maintained a 24-hour watch over the estate. Eventually, as the Plan of Campaign petered out in the aftermath of Parnell’s political collapse, resistance from tenants on the Olphert estate, as elsewhere, came to a close as did the evictions, although as so often the conflict left a long and bitter memory.





Looking at the Olpherts’ former residence in Ballyconnell, it is difficult to work out when work on the site began, a situation not helped by the many substantial extensions built around the old house in the second half of the last century. As already mentioned, the family are said to have purchased the land on which it stands in the 1620s, so perhaps something of a 17th century structure remains here. The main block is customarily believed to date from around the middle of the 18th century: the date 1763 is often proposed. This would appear to have been a long, two-storey house of five bays, possibly more (ie. taking in those parts of the building that now feature projecting gable ends). In the 19th century – c.1840 has been suggested – modifications were made to the house, when its east-facing facade was dickied up with the addition of a sandstone porch flanked by canted bay windows, all on the ground floor. The Olphert crest and motto “Dum Spiro Spero” (“While I Breathe, I Hope”) can be seen on the porch’s central armorial plaque. Hood mouldings were placed above windows on the gable-ended wings, the upper windows were also given cast-iron balconies. The architect responsible for these loosely-Tudorbethan alterations is unknown; given how superficial they are, perhaps no trained architect was employed. There are further extensions to the rear, but this area is now such a hopeless muddle that it is difficult to ascribe any date to them. 





The Olphert family remained in possession of, if not necessarily in residence at, Ballyconnell until 1917 when Sir John Olphert, son of the aforementioned Wybrants Olphert, died. Along with some 15,611 it was then bought by the Congested Districts Board for £20,620. The building was occupied first by the Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1921 and then by the Free State Army in 1922 during the Civil War, after which it was sold to the Office of Public Works for £7,000. In 1927 Ballyconnell was offered to the Loreto Order of nuns, which in 1927 who altered and extended the house, and opened a preparatory College, Coláiste Bhríde, for the education of female primary school teachers. Alterations and additions to the house took place during this period, with more following after the property was bought by the Catholic Diocese of Raphoe in 1961. Four years later, it opened as a secondary boarding school for boys and continued to serve this purpose until 1986. A year later, the place was sold again, this time being purchased by Udarás na Gaeltachta (a public sector authority responsible for the economic, social and cultural development of the Gaeltacht, that is parts of the country where Irish is the dominant language). This organisation used Ballyconnell as a Gaeltacht school\Irish college for some time, but then left the buildings empty, in which state they have remained ever since. Since 1996 part of the demesne has been laid out as a nine-hole golf course and earlier this year, the club running this facility lodged an application with the local authority for the removal of existing temporary buildings on the site and the erection of a new clubhouse (rather than renovating some of the very extensive existing structures here). Meanwhile, thanks to an initiative by local residents, the surrounding woodland which was laid out with many specimen trees in the 19th century has been developed for walkers/runners in the area. In the midst of all this sits the pathetic sight of Ballyconnell falling every further into decay. Ten years ago, in 2014, there was talk of the property being used as an addiction centre run by a Roman Catholic organisation, but that plan came to nothing. And nothing seems to be what has happened since. As so often with historic buildings in the care of official bodies – like the Health Service Executive and Coillte –  Udarás na Gaeltachta appears untroubled that a property for which it is responsible should stand neglected and ruinous. A shocking, but not unusual, waste of our resources. 

Very Arch



In November 1860 Charles William Cooper assumed by Royal Licence and according to the terms of his late uncle Charles King O’Hara, the latter’s surname thereby ensuring that he might inherit the O’Hara family seat at Annaghmore in County Sligo. Having done so, he then embarked on an extensive building programme, not only refurbishing and enlarging the main house (see High Victoriana « The Irish Aesthete) but also the adjacent stableyard, seen here. The nine bay, two-storey facade has a gable-fronted bays at either end and a single-bay central breakfront with entrance arch above which are the O’Hara arms and a clock set in a roundel. Inside the courtyard, the opposite side of the arch features a stone plaque bearing the date 1864 and Charles William O’Hara’s initials. James Franklin Fuller is thought to have been the architect responsible for work carried out on the house at the time, so he may well have had a hand here too. 


Empty Aisle, Deserted Chancel


Lone and weary as I wander’d by the bleak shore of the sea,
Meditating and reflecting on the world’s hard destiny,
Forth the moon and stars ‘gan glimmer, in the quiet tide beneath,
For on slumbering spring and blossom breathed not out of heaven a breath.

On I went in sad dejection, careless where my footsteps bore,
Till a ruined church before me opened wide its ancient door,
Till I stood before the portals, where of old were wont to be,
For the blind, the halt, and leper, alms and hospitality.

Still the ancient seat was standing, built against the buttress grey,
Where the clergy used to welcome weary trav’llers on their way;
There I sat me down in sadness, ‘neath my cheek I placed my hand,
Till the tears fell hot and briny down upon the grassy land.





There, I said in woful sorrow, weeping bitterly the while,
Was a time when joy and gladness reigned within this ruined pile;
Was a time when bells were tinkling, clergy preaching peace abroad,
Psalms a-singing, music ringing praises to the mighty God.

Empty aisle, deserted chancel, tower tottering to your fall,
Many a storm since then has beaten on the grey head of your wall!
Many a bitter storm and tempest has your roof-tree turned away,
Since you first were formed a temple to the Lord of night and day.

Holy house of ivied gables, that were once the country’s boast,
Houseless now in weary wandering are you scattered, saintly host;
Lone you are to-day, and dismal,— joyful psalms no more are heard,
Where, within your choir, her vesper screeches the cat-headed bird.

Ivy from your eaves is growing, nettles round your green hearth-stone,
Foxes howl, where, in your corners, dropping waters make their moan.
Where the lark to early matins used your clergy forth to call,
There, alas! no tongue is stirring, save the daw’s upon the wall.





Refectory cold and empty, dormitory bleak and bare,
Where are now your pious uses, simple bed and frugal fare?
Gone your abbot, rule and order, broken down your altar stones;
Nought see I beneath your shelter, save a heap of clayey bones.

O! the hardship, O! the hatred, tyranny, and cruel war,
Persecution and oppression, that have left you as you are!
I myself once also prosper’d; — mine is, too, an alter’d plight;
Trouble, care, and age have left me good for nought but grief to-night.

Gone my motion and my vigour — gone the use of eye and ear,
At my feet lie friends and children, powerless and corrupting here;
Woe is written on my visage, in a nut my heart could lie —
Death’s deliverance were welcome — Father, let the old man die.


Translation by Sir Samuel Ferguson of the Irish poem Machtnamh an Duine Dhoilghíosaigh (‘The Melancholy Mortal’s Reflections’) or, Caoineadh ar Mhainistir Thigh Molaige (‘Lament Over the Monastery House of Molaga’) by Seághan Ó CoileáinPictures of the 15th century Franciscan friary known as Moor Abbey, County Tipperary. 

 

Held Hostage



Gortnaclea Castle, County Laois is a 16th century tower house originally built by the Mac Giolla Phádraig family on a site overlooking the Gully river. It is famous for having been the place where in April 1600 Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond, a long-time ally of the English crown but by then aged almost 70, was held hostage by Owny MacRory O’More. At the end of the month, O’More sent his demands to the government, which included the removal of all English garrisons from that part of the country. This stipulation – and sundry others – were not met but the earl, by then in poor health, was eventually released after the payment of £3,000 (and lived for another 16 years). Of five storeys, Gortnaclea is a typical tower house of the period but unfortunately its easterly entrance front has long since collapsed, bringing down the spiral staircase which would have been immediately inside the main door; the graceful curving wall of the staircase can be seen on the north-east corner.


Into the Woods


In the mid-17th century, one Peter Carey from Devon came to Ireland and settled in County Cork where he acquired Ballymacpatrick, lying a few miles east of Fermoy and formerly part of the Condon estate on the river Blackwater. Generations of his descendants remained living in this place, the name of which was duly changed to Careysville: an early 19th century house built by the Careys survives here, although it is now owned by the Cavendish family. In the second half of the 18th century, Richard Carey, a younger son, became a Church of Ireland clergyman, as so often was the case with offspring not expected to inherit property. Although a prebendary of Donoughmore and Kiltegan in the diocese of Lismore, the Rev Carey lived in Clonmel, County Tipperary where he was associated with the local Free School. Both he and his son, Langer Carey, also a clergyman, lived a short distance south of Clonmel, just across the border into County Waterford, in a spot called Glenabbey.





Located on a spot overlooking the Glenary river, Glenabbey is supposed to derive its name from a mediaeval religious settlement, a grange established here by the Cistercian abbey of Inishlounaght not far from Clonmel. Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the mid-16th century, the lands of Inishlounaght – presumably including those at Glenabbey – passed by sale to Sir Edward Gough, his ownership confirmed in 1591 by the English crown. However, his grandson Patrick forfeited the property in 1641 and thereafter ownership of Glenabbey seems unknown until it became home to the Careys at the start of the 19th century.  





Although called Glenabbey House on the original 1840 Ordnance Survey Map, the remains here are now known as Carey’s Castle. Today surrounded by woodland owned by Coillte, Ireland’s forestry body, the property has a somewhat eccentric appearance, composed of a series of interlinking structures that incorporate a variety of architectural styles and themes. Evidently the intention was to suggest an ancient lineage, as indicated by the rather bizarre incorporation of a three-storey capped round tower into the largest part of the building. In fact, even this section is not especially substantial and contains no fireplaces (it may be that another part of the building immediately behind and now lost held some comfortable rooms). Carey’s Castle, while charming to look at, must have been rather unsatisfactory as a family residence, being more like a sequence of follies. To the immediate north of this main building, for example, is another that looks as though intended to serve as a chapel, except the arched windows are filled with rubble stones (and no evidence of openings ever existing on the other side of the same wall). In any case, it does not seem to have been used as a home for very long. The Rev Langer Carey died at the early age of 41 in 1830 and some years later his surviving family sold the property. The new owner is given as Lieutenant-Colonel Nuttall Greene, who already owned Kilmanahan Castle (see Shrouded in Mystery « The Irish Aesthete). Having greatly over-extended himself, in the aftermath of the Great Famine, Greene’s heir was forced to sell the family’s properties through the Encumbered Estates Court. After which Carey’s Castle was abandoned, and so fell into its present condition. 

Marooned



Located on the outskirts of Piltown, County Kilkenny, this early 19th century octagonal neo-gothic tower was erected by the third Earl of Bessborough as a monument to his second son Frederick Cavendish Ponsonby who was presumed to have been killed in battle during the Napoleonic Wars. The story is told that work began c.1810 when the young man was reported dead while participating in the Peninsula Campaign. However, it seems more likely that the tower was constructed in 1815 after Ponsonby was gravely injured at the Battle of Waterloo. Among his injuries on that occasion, he was knocked off his horse and wounded in both arms, then stabbed in the back while lying on the ground, ridden over by members of the Prussian cavalry and beaten up by other soldiers looking for plunder. Somehow, he survived all this and was brought to Brussels where months of recuperation followed. Ponsonby later went on to become a Major-General and Governor of Malta. As for this building, it was left incomplete until the middle of the last century when another storey was added so that it could be used as a water tower. Today it stands marooned in the middle of a traffic roundabout.