Category Archives: Architectural History

An Irregular Beauty




Caught in the rain, this is Ballyannan Castle, a semi-fortified house built c.1650 for St John Brodrick, an English soldier who had arrived in Ireland almost a decade earlier as a captain of foot. By deft political footwork, he survived the turmoils of the rest of the century, only dying in 1711 at the age of 84 and leaving behind several sons, one of whom became the first Viscount Midleton. While the Brodrick family survives, Ballyannan did not do so, abandoned by the mid-18th century and already ruinous in 1786. The house is notable for its circular corner towers above which rise exceptionally tall chimneys. Ballyannan was once surrounded by extensive and elaborate pleasure gardens, described in 1743 as containing ‘all the irregular beauties that charm the fancy and delight the senses,’ but little now remains in fields given over to agricultural use, other than a small brick summerhouse (alas, heavy rain discouraged a visit to this. Another time…)



A Complex History


The name of Newcastle, County Longford would seem to indicate that the present house, or an earlier one on or near this site, replaced a more ancient building. The earliest information on the place seems to be from 1680 when the lands of its demesne, formerly part of the O’Farrell territory, are recorded as being purchased by Robert Choppyne (or Choppin) who built here ‘a fayre house and a wooden bridge.’ By this date, he had already become High Sheriff of Longford three years earlier and would go on to represent County Longford in the Irish House of Commons in 1692 before dying a year or two later. The Newcastle property was left to his nephew Anthony Sheppard who continued to acquire more land in the area, but not so fortunate when it came to continuing his line: he and his wife had four sons who died young and one who survived to adulthood, only to predecease his father. And while the estate was left to Sheppard’s daughter Mary, who had married Arthur St. Leger, Viscount Doneraille, she also died without heirs not long after.  So Newcastle passed to Anthony Sheppard’s widowed sister, Frances Harman (her late husband, Sir Wentworth Harman, had died in 1714 when ‘coming in a dark night from Chapel-Izod, his coach overturning, tumbled down a precipice, and he dies in consequence of the wounds and bruises he received’). For many years, the estate was managed by her younger son, the Rev Cutts Harman, who appeared here some months ago with regard to Castlecor (see A Worthy Recipient « The Irish Aesthete). Once again, the direct line failed and so, on the death of the Rev Harman, Castlecor passed to his nephew, Laurence Harman Parsons, on condition that the latter adopt his uncle’s surname: accordingly, he became Laurence Parsons Harman. He would also, in due course, be created Baron Oxmantown, then Viscount Oxmantown and finally first Earl of Rosse in 1806. His only surviving child was a daughter, Frances, who married Robert King, first Viscount Lorton, of Rockingham, County Roscommon. Their younger son, Laurence Harman King-Harman inherited both the Newcastle and Rockingham estates; on his death in 1875 the two were divided, with Newcastle passing to a younger son, Colonel Wentworth King-Harman. The  estate reached its largest extent during this period, running to some 38,616 acres and described in 1900 as ‘a master-piece of smooth and intricate organisation, with walled gardens and glasshouses, its dairy, its laundry, its carpenters, masons and handymen of all estate crafts, the home farm, the gamekeepers and retrievers kennels, its saw-mill and paint shop and deer park for the provision of venison. The place is self-supporting to a much greater degree than most country houses in England.’





The core of Newcastle could date from the late 17th century when Robert Choppyne built his ‘fayre house’ here. However, there is no visible evidence of this building, at least on the exterior where the main facade suggests a classic house from the early-to-mid 18th century of seven bays and two storeys (with perhaps the third added later). Around 1785, soon after Laurence Harman Parsons had inherited the estate, enlargements were made with the construction of slightly projecting wings, single-storey to the east and two-storey to the west. Further alterations took place in the mid-19th century when Newcastle passed into the possession of Laurence Harman King-Harman; the Dutch-style gable over the centre bay probably dates from this period, along with the entrance porch containing a family coat of arms. Internally, the building has undergone many alterations also, so that it is now not easy to detect what is from any particular period. However, there are striking – and now highly coloured – neo-classical Adamesque ceilings in the former drawing and dining rooms, the former featuring a large oval set in a rectangular frame, in which corner panels depict musical instruments. The dining room ceiling is centred on a diamond pattern decorated with urns and scrolling foliage. There is also some extant neo-classical plasterwork on the main staircase.  





While the Newcastle estate may have run to more than 38,000 acres in the 1880s, by the time Colonel Wentworth King-Harman died in 1919, various land acts meant that it had shrunk to less than 1,000 acres. His son, Major Alexander King-Harman, sold more land to the Department of Lands in 1934, leaving just the demesne thereafter. Following the major’s death in 1949, Newcastle was inherited by a cousin, Captain Robert Douglas King-Harman, who two years later sold the house and surrounding land for £11,000 to a religious order, the Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary. The house was used as a retirement home for nuns and also as a boarding school, but the Missionary Sisters remained for less than two decades, leaving in 1968, after which Newcastle changed hands on a number of occasions and was run as an hotel. Although it is not open to the public at the moment, the property’s current owner, a Hong Kong businessman, applied to the local authority last August for planning permission to create a holiday park on the surrounding land, incorporating 99 mobile homes, together with ‘an area for touring pitches and casual camping spaces’, a reception hut, a playground and separate grass play area. The adjacent woodland accommodates a Centre Parcs holiday resort which also intends to expand its facilities.





Text here…

A Pocket Mansion




Currently for sale, this miniature Tudorbethan house stands a short distance north-east from the site of Kiltanon, County Clare. A substantial property, the latter was built in the 1830s for the Molonys, an ancient Irish family, one of whom – John O’Molony, Roman Catholic Bishop of Limerick – followed James II to Paris where he helped to found the Irish College, in which he was buried following his death in 1702. In Ireland, the Molonys subsequently converted to the Established Church but they kept a souvenir of their Catholic forebear: a grey marble table inlaid with two hands of old French cards and a knave of diamonds torn in half as if they had just been thrown down. Seemingly, this piece of furniture had been presented by Louis XIV to the bishop in restitution for the king’s fit of pique over a game of cards in which the cleric was a participant. The table was supposedly lost, along with the rest of Kiltanon’s contents, when the building was burnt by the IRA in September 1920. Given its (somewhat weathered) appearance, it would appear that this little house was once part of the Molony estate and constructed around the same time as the main residence itself.



A Monument to the Past



Few people today will be familiar with the name of William Delany, Jesuit priest and one of the great educationalists of the late 19th century. Born the son of a baker in County Carlow, in 1860 at the age of 25 he was sent to teach at St Stanislaus’s College, then a Jesuit secondary school in County Offaly. Ten years later, Delany became the college’s Rector and embarked on an expansionist policy which led to rebukes from his superiors (the school ran up substantial debts due to his building programme). What they, and everyone else, could not deny, was the quality of education received by students at St Stanislaus’s College, which led them to seek further academic qualifications. At the time, the Catholic University of Ireland, founded in 1851, could not legally confer degrees, and Cardinal Cullen had forbidden Roman Catholics from attending other third-level institutions because they were non-denominational, denouncing them as ‘godless colleges.’ From 1876 Delany overcame this problem by entering his students for the London University examinations, where they achieved one hundred percent success: in 1881 a First Place and First Exhibition were secured by boys at St Stanislaus’s College, competing against thousands of English entrants. Delany would soon leave the school, and was instead appointed the first president of the new University College Dublin (the successor to the Catholic University) where he achieved equal success. However, despite its academic achievements, in 1886 St Stanislaus’s College closed as a boys’ school. The debts caused by Delany’s building programmes, along with the shortage of Jesuit priests in Ireland, forced the order to make certain decisions, one of which was to focus attention Clongowes Wood College, County Kildare, despite the fact that the latter’s record was not as good as that of the County Offaly school.  






St Stanislaus’s College, popularly known as Tullabeg, dates back to 1818. The land on which it stands had been provided a few years earlier by a local woman, Maria O’Brien, whose father, a wealthy Roman Catholic merchant from Dublin, had bought an estate in the area: Rahan Lodge, originally built c.1740 as a hunting lodge. Initially it was intended that the new college would act as a novitiate for training Jesuit priests. However, before long it began to serve as a preparatory school for boys who would then go on to Clongowes Wood College. After several decades the school began to offer second level education to students and, as already mentioned, continued to do so until 1886. Two years later, a new purpose was found for the property, when it became the novitiate for the Irish province of the Jesuits; every young man who entered the order thereafter would spend a period of time at Tullabeg. This continued to be the case until 1930 when the novitiate was transferred to Emo Court, County Laois. Next the place became a faculty of philosophy for Jesuits who had already finished their studies at university. A further change of direction occurred in 1962 when the order decided to make Tullabeg a retreat centre; this finally closed in 1991. Thereafter the property seems to have had a chequered history, at one stage being used as a nursing home while a nine-hole golf course was installed in the grounds. 






St Stanislaus’s College is a building of diverse parts and periods, the whole adding up to a very substantial complex. The earliest part dates back to the second decade of the 19th century, when a south-facing block of three storeys over basement was constructed, its architectural style very much aping that of country houses of the period, with a flight of stone steps leading up to the main entrance, the door flanked by Ionic columns and topped by a generous fanlight. Over the following years, projecting wings were added on either side of this block, and then a church built to the immediate west. Once St Stanislaus’s College began to take in secondary school students, additional space was required, so in the early 1860s a large block to the east was added. Known as the Seaver Wing (after the rector of the period), the building, which is centred on a large three-bay breakfront featuring substantial tripartite fenestration, incorporated classrooms, dormitories and a refectory. Later in the same decade, a further wing was added parallel to and north of the original house; this held a college chapel and study hall, along with further accommodation. The work of this period was designed by successful Dublin architect Charles Geoghegan. During his time as rector, William Delany commissioned further work on the premises, rebuilding the students’ chapel, converting another chapel into a study hall and remodelling the east wing; he also had part of the local river deepened and enclosed to provide decent swimming facilities. Little of substance appears to have changed thereafter until the mid-1940s when Fr Donal O’Sullivan, then rector of St Stanislaus’s, commissioned the modernist architect Michael Scott to design a new chapel in the building; this had stained glass windows by Evie Hone, a timber altar and statues by sculptor Laurence Campbell and terracotta Stations of the Cross by French sculptor Robert Villiers. When the Jesuits left Tullabeg in 1991, they removed all these fittings and installed them in some of the order’s other properties. So those items were at least saved from the vandalism and decay that awaited the rest of the place and has led to its present decay. What can be done with such a vast range of buildings? Tullabeg is in a relatively remote part of the Irish midlands, in a rural area with few facilities. No doubt this isolation was beneficial when St Stanislaus’s operated as a religious house, but is now a distinct drawback. It would appear a few commercial ventures were attempted or considered here, but not found viable. So it sits, neglected and falling into further dereliction, a monument to another, now passed, era in the country’s history. 


In the Midle



Midleton College, County Cork was originally endowed in 1696 by Elizabeth Villiers, Countess of Orkney, former Maid of Honour to Mary Stuart (who had died two years earlier) and former mistress of the latter’s husband, William III. He had granted Lady Orkney large tracts of land in Ireland, and some of these were used to endow the institution, intended for the education of Protestant boys. The building itself appears to have been constructed some 20 years later, the first schoolmaster, the Rev. George Chinnery, being appointed in August 1717. As originally constructed, the building consisted of an H-plan block of two storeys over basement; writing in 1750, Charles Smith referred to a ‘handsome dome’ over the centre but this has long-since disappeared. On the ground floor, the centre of the property was occupied by a school room, lit by the large arched windows on either side of the main entrance approached by a broad flight of steps; the dormitory, lit by three oculi, was directly above, and the schoolmaster lived in one of the wings. The side elevations are of eight bays, the four central ones slightly advanced. The rear of the house shares many features with the facade. The architect is unknown, although the name of Benjamin Crawley, who was involved in the building of a couple of country houses in the south-east of Ireland during this period, has been mentioned. However, the interiors were thoroughly altered in the early 19th century and then later extensions added to the block, so only the exterior bearssome re semblance to the college’s appearance when first constructed. 


Encircled


The Tower House appears on this site regularly, often under the guise, or at least the name, of a castle. However, tower houses are distinct from, and appeared later than, castles which were introduced into Ireland by the Anglo-Normans in the 12th and 13th century and are substantial defensive structures, fortified keeps on raised ground within a walled enclosure. According to archaeologist Colm Donnelly, tower houses should be regarded as a species within the castle genus. While they were often erected inside a protective bawn wall, the typical tower house was a less complex building than the Norman castle, being, as its name implies, a tall, single tower. In this respect, the structures bear similarity to what are known as Peel Towers in northern England and the Scottish borders, and which date from much the same period. 





The origins of the Irish tower house date back to 1429. In that year, a statute issued by Henry VI, King of England (and ostensibly Lord of Ireland) declared, ‘It is agreed and asserted that every liege man of our Lord, the King of the said Counties, who chooses to build a Castle or Tower House sufficiently embattled or fortified, wither the next ten years to wit 20 feet in length, 16 feet in width and 40 feet in height or more, that the commons of the said Counties shall pay to the said person, to build the said Castle or Tower ten pounds by way of subsidy.’ The ‘said Counties’ to which this document refers covered the area taking in parts of what are now Meath, Louth and Kildare in which English authority still held sway and which was known as the Pale. And the intent behind the statute was to ensure better protection of that area from incursion by those who lived outside its perimeter.  It is often proposed that this piece of legislation, with its financial incentive, did much to encourage the popularity of tower houses within the boundaries of the Pale. However, soon enough they also began to appear elsewhere throughout the country, their construction popular among both descendants of the Anglo-Norman families and members of the Gaelic nobility. They continued to be built for some 200 years and it was only in the first half of the 17th century that they were superseded by fortified houses. It has been estimated that between 1400 and 1650 in the region of 3,000 tower houses were constructed. Many of them survive to the present day, in various states of repair.




No two tower houses are identical but customarily they were square or rectangular in shape, running to four or five storeys in height and with a single arched doorcase on the ground floor providing the only point of access. A number survive in County Tipperary which, unusually, are circular; one of these at Moorstown was shown here three years ago (see In the Round « The Irish Aesthete). Here is another, Ballynahow which is exceptionally well-preserved. It is believed to date from the early 16th century when erected by a branch of the Purcells, a family closely allied to the powerful Butlers, and whose main base was at Loughmoe (see A Former Family Seat « The Irish Aesthete): the latter incorporates a more typical tower house into a later fortified house. Ballynahow, on the other hand, is free-standing and, as already mentioned, cylindrical in shape. Thereafter much of its design and layout follows the typical pattern, with a large vaulted ground floor reached by an arched door on the east side (with a murder hole strategically placed above) and only narrow slits in the walls at this low level to provide light to the interior while not leaving those inside exposed or visible to attack. Larger window openings can be found on the upper floors, along with substantial chimneypieces as these were the main residential quarters for the occupants. They were reached thanks to a stone spiral staircase climbing around the immediate inside of the building. Four machiolations are evenly spaced along the roofline; the tower house would originally have been finished with a conical dome. It appears that as late as the 1840s the lower floors of Ballynahow were still in residential use and this may help to explain why it is in such good condition. 

A Reminder



In the little village of Newmarket, County Kilkenny stands this rather substantial building, of nine bays and one storey with half-attic. Designed in a loosely Tudoresque style with arched limestone ashlar recesses at ground level, the centre of the facade is occupied by a single-bay breakfront featuring a large carriage arch, now blocked, above which a framed plaque is carved with the date 1839. Now seemingly disused, it was presumably constructed an agricultural outbuilding for the Castle Morres estate which lay immediately to the south. While Castle Morres itself is gone (unroofed in the 1930s and demolished in 1978), this survives as a reminder of a now-vanished estate.


Replete with Memories


Lisronagh, County Tipperary is today not so much a village as a hamlet, but this was not always the case. According to Samuel Lewis, in 1837 it had a population of 981, whereas in the census of 2016, the number of inhabitants had fallen to 184. The latter figure is even a fraction of what it had been in the Middle Ages: surviving documentation from 1333 show Lisronagh’s population likely exceeded 400. At that time, the land here was held by Lady Elizabeth de Burgh, daughter of a descendant of William de Burgh, the Anglo-Norman knight who in the late 12th century had acquired vast estates in this part of the country. William de Burgh is thought to have built some kind of fortified structure at Lisronagh, probably of wood, but this was probably later replaced by a stone castle. That building is not what is seen on the site today, since the earlier structure appears to have been destroyed in the 15th century by Edmond Butler, eighth Baron Dunboyne and Seneschal of Tipperary. 





Lisronagh Castle, or what remains of it, is a 16th century tower house. A document dated 1530 in the collection of the National Library of Ireland shows the grant by one Richard Howet to Piers Butler, Earl of Ossory (later eighth Earl of Ormond) ‘of the tenement of the castle of Lisronagh.’ The present building may have been built thereafter, and remained the property of the Butler family at least into the latter part of the 17th century. When and how it fell into disrepair does not appear known. A large opening close to the base of the east wall (which faces the adjacent road) suggests this was the original entrance, although that is around the corner on the north side. High above the arched doorcase are corbels that would once have supported the now-lost machiolation; also largely gone are the window stones, presumably removed at some date. Internally, the tower house follows the usual pattern with a large, vaulted chamber of the ground floor. A flight of stairs to the immediate right of the entrance leads to the floors above, one of which retains a fireplace but otherwise little of the interior decoration survives. 





Immediately north of Lisronagh Castle is an abandoned church. Dedicated to St John the Baptist, it dates from 1831 when constructed with the aid of funds from the Board of First Fruits, and on the site of a Medieval building (presumably serving the 400-plus populace recorded as having been here in the 1330s). The church very much conforms to the Board of First Fruits typology, having a three-bay nave with access at the west end beneath a two-stage bell tower. The entrance features a handsome stone carved Tudor arch but otherwise there is little decoration and certainly nothing inside, which has been given over to vegetation (as has the eastern end of the church). Services ceased here a century ago, in 1923, and the building subsequently became roofless and open to the elements. So there they now stand, side by side, two historic properties, both abandoned, both replete with memories of the past.

Prior to This



The remains of the 15th century church at Cloughprior, County Tipperary. Its name derives from the fact that in the 12th century the land on which the building stands came into the possession of the Augustinian Priory of St John the Baptist some ten miles south at Tyone, on the outskirts of Nenagh. It subsequently became a parish church but then fell into ruin, although the surrounding graveyard has consistently remained a place of burial. Of note here is a separate, walled section set aside for members of the Waller family who for some 20o years lived close by at Prior Park, a house dating from the 1770s. One of those more recently interred was 26-year old Edward de Warenne Waller, killed in a terrorist bomb attack in Bali in 2002. 



Whom Love Binds as One



An ancient story lies behind the name of Ightermurragh Castle, County Cork. In the second quarter of the 17th century,  Edmund fitzjohn FitzGerald, son and heir of the last official Seneschal of Imokilly, had three daughters. Since there was no son to inherit his property, he decided to divide it between the trio, allowing them to choose which part of the property they would take.  The eldest said ‘Beigh Inse na Chruithneactha agam sa’ (I will have the Wheat Field by the River): this is a tower house called Castle Richard. The middle daughter said ‘An Cnoc Ghlas damh-sa’ ( The Green Hill for me): this is a townland which came to be known as Knockglass. Finally, the youngest daughter, Margaret FitzGerald said ‘Agus an t-Iochtar mo Rogha’ (The lower is my choice): from this utterance the name Ightermurragh is said to have derived.





Margaret FitzGerald married a local man, Edmond Supple, whose family was said to have descended from a Norman knight called de Capel or de la Chapelle. The couple embarked on constructing a new residence for themselves at Ightermurragh; a chimneypiece still extant on the first floor carries the following inscription in Latin ‘Edmundus Suppel Dominus Margritatque Gerald, hanc struxere Domum quos ligat unus amor 1641’ (Edmund Supple and Margaret Gerald, whom love binds as one, built this house in 1641). As was so often the case, especially during the troubled period of the Confederate Wars, the couple did not long enjoy the place: before long: in 1642 the Catholic rebels, having failed to persuade Supple to join them, drove him and his wife and children from Ightermurragh Castle and burnt it out. Edmund Supple died in 1648 and not long after the remains of the building and surrounding lands came into the possession of Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery who managed to hold onto this acquisition even after the Restoration of Charles II when many old Irish families managed to have their estates returned to them. Edmund Supple’s descendants instead received other land in the area and built a new house for themselves, which they called Supple’s Court. In the 18th century, Ightermurragh Castle – presumably restored – was leased to a branch of the Smyth family. However, in 1772 Mr Beverley Smyth was attacked by a band of robbers who broke into the building and supposedly roasted the occupant on a gridiron in order to make him tell them where he kept his money. The castle was thereafter abandoned and left to fall into its present condition. 





Of five storeys (including an attic and semi-basement) and divided by four string courses, Ightermurragh Castle – really a fortified house – stands on a rise above the river Womanagh and is cruciform in shape. What might be considered the main block runs east to west and measures 72 by 32 feet, with walls some five feet thick. The dimensions of the wings are 20 by 16 feet, the walls around four feet thick;; that to the south held the entrance, to the north the main staircase.  Forty-five feet high, the building retains six of the original seven chimneystacks which rise a further ten or 15 feet; twelve of the fireplaces survive in situ. Of various dimensions, there are 45 windows, although none on the west gable end.