Category Archives: Architectural History

A Worthy Recipient



As some readers may be aware, last week the latest recipient of the Historic Houses of Ireland – O’Flynn Group Heritage Prize was announced. The prize is an initiative first devised by the Irish Aesthete in 2020 to acknowledge the importance of our privately-owned heritage properties and to recognise the invaluable work by their owners. For this reason, the prize is hosted by Historic Houses of Ireland, a charity established in 2008 to promote the immediate and long-term future of the country’s privately owned historic properties. All HHI members are owners of such buildings and they understand better than anyone the sector’s particular problems, especially over recent years. Worth €5,000 and adjudicated by a small group of assessors, the prize is generously sponsored by the O’Flynn Group, which has shown itself keenly aware of the importance of providing a viable future for historic buildings, as can be seen in the company’s own redevelopment of the early 19th century former barracks site in Ballincollig, County Cork. The third recipient of the prize is Castlecor, County Longford. 





At first glance, Castlecor appears to be a typical small Georgian residence, its otherwise plain three-bay, two storey facade relieved by a central pedimented tripartite doorcase. But venture to either side, or even inside the building, and its design proves to be much more complicated. So too does its history, not least because nobody can be sure when work first began on the site. In the 18th century, the land on which Castlecor stands belonged to the Harman (later King Harman) family, the first of whom was Nicholas Harman who settled in County Carlow in the first quarter of the 17th century. His great-grandson, Wentworth Harman married as his second wife Frances Sheppard, heiress to a large estate in County Longford, with their main residence at Newcastle, just a few miles to the east of Castlecor. This explains how the Harmans came to be based in the Midlands, but does not help to settle on a date when Castlecor was built. The oldest part of the building is often thought to have been commissioned by one of Wentworth and Frances Sheppard’s sons, the Rev. Cutts Harman, a Church of Ireland clergyman who in 1759 was appointed Dean of Waterford and six years later inherited the main Newcastle estate following his childless brother’s death. As we shall see, it is open to question whether the Rev Harman was responsible for the work here, but in any case, following his own death with a direct heir, the Longford property passed to a nephew, Laurence Harman, later Lord Oxmantown and eventually first Earl of Rosse. Around 1820 the second Earl of Rosse sold Castlecor to one Captain Thomas Hussey who is believed to have added an extension to one side of the existing property so as to provide more rooms. However, in 1855 the house and 268 acres of land were offered for sale by the Encumbered Estates Court, and after being briefly owned by David Dunlop Urquhart of Fair Hill, Lanarkshire, Scotland, the property was acquired by Thomas Bond, member of another Longford family. In 1913 his granddaughter Emily Bond and her husband Captain Charles James Clerk employed Dublin architect Adam Millar to enlarge the building further, and it was he who designed the present facade. During the War of Independence, the Clerks moved to England and sold first the contents and then Castlecor itself, the house being bought by a local family. In the mid-1940s they in turn sold it on to an American women’s religious order who used it as a Rosary Convent for Novitiates. Sold again in 1973, Castlecor stood empty for four years until it became a nursing home, serving this function some 30 years before being left vacant again. Finally, in 2009 the present owners bought the place and, as funds become available, have gradually been restoring Castlecor. 





While the 19th and 20th century additions to Castlecor are of a high standard – not least Millar’s first-floor octagonal gallery that provides the entrance hall with ample light – they rather pall by comparison the building in its original form. Rightly described by Casey and Rowan in 1993 as ‘perhaps the most unusual building of the C18 anywhere in Ireland,’, the property was not intended to be a permanent residence but instead a hunting lodge, of two storeys with the lower floor containing kitchens and service rooms for the single Great Room above. And what a great room it proves to be: a vast octagonal space, 42 feet across with round-headed windows on every second side and single rooms (measuring 20 by 14 feet) opening off the other four.  To heat such a substantial area, the centre of the room is taken up by a four-sided fireplace, each of them directly facing one of the windows, the light from which is reflected in mirrors set above the chimneypieces. The structure is framed in each corner by a towering Corinthian column, these supporting a richly ornamented entablature, each having at its centre a mask of Apollo. A single octagonal column then climbs to the coved ceiling. The rest of the walls are covered in 19th century neo-Egyptian stencil work, thought to have been inspired by illustrations in Owen Jones’s Decoration, published in 1856. As mentioned, quite when this extraordinary building was constructed – and by whom – remains open to conjecture, as does its source of inspiration since it is quite unlike anything else in the country. Albeit on a much smaller scale, the building shares some characteristics with Stupinigi, the hunting palace outside Turin designed by Juvarra in the 1720s for the Duke of Savoy, and Maurice Craig also noted similarities with the hunting lodge at Clemenswerth in Lower Saxony, designed a decade later by Johann Conrad Schlaun for Prince Clemens August, Elector-Archbishop of Cologne. Closer to home, as Casey and Rowan note, in 1739 the English architect and pattern-book publisher William Halfpenny, then resident in Ireland, was commissioned to produce designs for a new Bishop’s Palace and Cathedral in Waterford: although none of these was used, some of the plans for the latter building are not unlike what can be seen at Castlecor. Perhaps it was Halfpenny who came up with the idea of the house’s unusual form, but if so it was constructed much earlier than  1765 when the Rev. Cutts Harman inherited the Newcastle estate.  We may never know, but at least we can be confident that thanks to the enterprise of Castlecor’s present owners, the future of this wonderful building is secure, making them deserved recipients of the Historic Houses of Ireland – O’Flynn Group Heritage Prize.


Text here…Historic Houses of Ireland – O’Flynn Group Heritage Prize.

 

Back to Front



The somewhat unsatisfactory entrance front of Mount Juliet, County Kilkenny is explained by the fact that until the start of the last century, this was actually the rear of the house: the original facade, with main door approached via double steps above a raised basement, is on the other side where the land drops steeply down to the river Nore. Mount Juliet dates from the third quarter of the 18th century when built for Somerset Hamilton Butler, first Earl of Carrick. His descendants continued to own the estate until 1914 when it was sold by the sixth earl to Major Dermot McCalmont who had inherited a fortune from his second cousin, Hugh McCalmont; it was then that the house underwent considerable modifications. The interior, much of its decoration commissioned by the second Earl of Carrick in the 1780s, contains plasterwork in the style of Michael Stapleton, including these medallions with classical figures. The McCalmont family sold the property in 1988 and it has since served as an hotel.


In the Summer Time


Summerhill, County Meath has featured here before (see My Name is Ozymandias « The Irish Aesthete)  and is well-known as one of Ireland’s great lost country houses. But its namesake in County Mayo is probably less familiar to readers, although its striking remains are hard to miss when travelling through that part of the island. This second Summerhill was built and occupied by a branch of the Palmer family, which has also featured here (see Lackin’ a Roof « The Irish Aesthete). According to Burke’s Landed Gentry of 1846, ‘This family, long settled in Co Mayo, derives from a common ancestor with the Palmers of Palmerstown and Rush House, and is presumed to have been originally from Kent.’ By the second half of the 18th century, the Palmers owned a number of estates in north Mayo, Summerhill being one of them. 





Summerhill may have been built by Thomas Palmer, who died in 1757, or perhaps by his son, also called Thomas (as were successive generations of this branch of the family), meaning it was likely constructed around the mid-18th century. In 1798 the property was let to one John Bourke who, in August, following the landing nearby of a French force under General Humbert, organised to have the house secured. This proved a wise precaution as a number of other such properties in the area, including Castlereagh, seat of Arthur Knox, and Castle Lacken, owned by Sir John Palmer, were attacked and pillaged by a mob. Bourke’s home found itself under siege by the same band until a French officer based in Killala, Col Armand Charost, despatched a number of his troops, as was later reported, ‘to Summerhill to appease the mob, and another party of men to Castlereagh to save what remained of the provisions and liquors. The appearance of the emissaries ended the siege at Mr. Bourke’s house; but the Castlereagh party, which consisted entirely of natives, could think of no better expedient for preserving the spirits from the thirsty bandits that coveted them than by concealing as much as they could in their own stomachs. The consequence was that they returned to Killala uproariously drunk. As for Castle Lacken, it was completely gutted, and the occupant and his large family were driven out to seek shelter as best they could find it.’ Within a few years of these events, the Palmers were back in residence at Summerhill, and recorded as living there by Samuel Lewis in 1837 and also by Burke in his 1846 guide to landed gentry. However, in the second half of the 19th century, the property was sold to the McCormack family, who remained there until c.1929 when what remained of the estate, running to some 296 acres, was broken up by the Land Commission and the house subsequently abandoned. 





In his 1978 Guide to Irish Country Houses, Mark Bence-Jones noted certain stylistic similarities between Summerhill and Summergrove, County Laois (see A Gem « The Irish Aesthete). Both houses are of five bays and two storeys over raised basement, with the central pedimented breakfront single bay featuring a doorcase reached by a flight of steps and flanked by sidelights below a first-floor Venetian window. Summerhill’s facade has an oculus within the pediment, whereas Summergrove has a Diocletian window, but certainly the two buildings share many features. However, whereas the latter still stands and is in good condition, the latter is now a roofless shell: photographs from just a few decades ago show the majority of slates still in place, but the house is now open to the elements. When Bence-Jones visited, the interiors were still reasonably intact: he included a photograph of ceiling stuccowork, describing it as ‘in a simple and somewhat primitive rococo, complete with the odd rather amateurishly-moulded  bird.’ All now gone, as can be seen, and inside the house nothing left but bits of timber and plaster.  

Little Italy



As many readers will know, Charles Bianconi was an Italian-born entrepreneur who at the age of 16 came to Dublin in 1802 to work as a printer and engraver. Moving to Carrick-on-Suir a few years later, in 1815 he eventually settled in Clonmel, County Tipperary and there established a highly successful business offering passengers inexpensive and efficient travel in coaches around the country. In May 1854, his elder daughter, Catherine Henrietta Bianconi, died at the age of 25 and her father decided to build a mortuary chapel in Boherlahan, a village close to the Longfield estate which he had bought some years earlier. In November 1861, the limestone and sandstone chapel – designed by Bianconi and built at a cost of £1,000 – received the remains of Catherine Henrietta which were placed in a vault; her father would join her there following his own death in 1875. 


En Garde



The facade of Castlegarde, County Limerick, the core of which is a five-storey tower house said to have been in continuous occupation since first constructed by the O’Brien family. After being confiscated by the crown and granted to Sir George Bourchier at the end of the 16th century, the building passed through various hands until 1820 when acquired by Waller O’Grady, a son of Standish O’Grady, future first Viscount Guillamore. Waller O’Grady commissioned the architect siblings James and George Pain to restore and enlarge the building, to which they added a castellated wing as well as restoring the bawn wall and adding a new gatehouse entrance to the site. The last of these has a most curious feature: inside and above the entrance on plinths are  three stone figures, much worn but said to represent Bacchus, Pallas Athene and Aphrodite.  Clearly these sculptures are of an earlier period, but what might have been their origin or how they came to be here looks to be unknown.


Shades of Gray


Few old ruins in Ireland are as dramatically situated as Graystown Castle, County Tipperary. Perched on an outcrop of limestone rock, to its immediate west the land drops steeply towards the Clashawley river, the castle offering views of the surrounding countryside for several miles. There appears to be some dispute about how it came to be called Graystown, one suggestion being that this is a corruption of the name of Raymond le Gros, one of the first Norman knights to arrive in Ireland; he would come to own large swathes of land in the south-east of the country and is said to have been buried at Molana Abbey, County Waterford (see A Diligent Divine « The Irish Aesthete). On the other hand, it seems more likely that a Norman family called de Grey gave their name to the place. The history of Graystown becomes clearer after 1305 when 120 acres of land here was acquired by Henry Laffan, a clerk closely associated with the powerful Butler family. Despite various disturbances and upheavals, he and his descendants would continue to occupy the site for more than 300 years. 




As mentioned, the Laffans were based at Graystown for several centuries, although their relationship with the Butlers appears to have deteriorated: : in 1524, James Laffan of Graystown was among the freeholders of Tipperary, who complained to Henry VIII of the ‘extortions, coyne and livery’ levied on them by Sir James Butler of Kiltinan and Sir Edmond Butler of Cahir as deputies of the Earl of Ormonde. Still, they managed to stay in place. In 1613, Thomas Laffan of Graystown was a member of the Irish Parliament for Tipperary and in 1640 Henry Laffan held some 3,200 acres of land in the area.  In the Civil Survey of 1654, Graystown is described as follows: ‘Upon this land standeth a good castle, a slate house wantinge repaire with a large bawne & severall cabbins.’ Henry Laffan’s son Marcus served as Commissioner of troops and taxes in the barony of Slieveardagh. However, in the following decade, the Laffans’ land was seized from them by the Commonwealth government and the family was transplanted to East Galway, being settled near Ballinasloe. Graystown was granted to one Gyles Cooke who is listed as proprietor of the place in the 1659 Census of Ireland. And thereafter there is little information about the castle: in Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) he mentions its ‘remains’, indicating that the building had become ruinous by that date, as it remains to the present. 




Text here. As mentioned, Graystown Castle is wonderfully sited on the edge of a limestone escarpment, the north-west of the building – where an arched entrance is located – seeming to teeter right on the edge of the outcrop. Some sections of a bawn wall survive but much has been lost, as with the castle itself. This looks to have been a typical tower house from the late 16th/16th centuries, rectangular in form, of four storeys and rising some 60 feet high. A large portion of the south wall has gone, leaving the interior exposed and showing the layout of the different floors and the form of the vaulted chambers on various levels. To the immediate north of the castle is a three-storey gable wall, the only section of what was presumably a later mansion, perhaps constructed by the Laffans in the first half of the 17th century before the country was overwhelmed with warfare and destruction. This must be what survives of the ‘slate house wantinge repaire’ mentioned in the 1654 Civil Survey. The same document also refers to a number of cabins, indicating there was once some kind of village in the immediate vicinity, but of this there is no trace.

Founding Fathers


There seems to be some dispute over who founded a monastery at Drumlane, County Cavan, the two potential candidates being St Columba and Saint Máedóc of Ferns. If the former, then a religious house would have been established here in the mid-sixth century, if the latter then the date would be somewhat later. In any case, not a lot now remains to show how important this monastery had once been; at its height, Drumlane was the richest ecclesiastical establishment in this part of the country. The church is thought to be mid-12th century and in the aftermath of the Reformation continued to be used for services by the Church of Ireland until 1821 when a new church was built and this one unroofed. The adjacent truncated round tower, probably 11th century, is missing its upper section and now rises 38 feet.


Abandoned


In August 1189 William Marshall married Isabel de Clare, heiress of Richard de Clare, otherwise known as Strongbow, and through his wife came to be one of the greatest Anglo-Norman landowners in Ireland. The couple would have ten children, five of them sons, which would seem to have secured the family’s future, except for a bishop’s curse. At some date between 1207 and 1213, Marshall, by then Earl of Pembroke, seized two manors belonging to Albin O’Molloy (Ailbe Ua Maíl Mhuaidh) and refused to return them. For this slight, O’Molloy excommunicated him and, in the aftermath of Marshall’s death, when his children still held onto the manors, the bishop is supposed to have laid a curse on them, declaring that none of the sons would have heirs and that the great Marshall estates would be scattered. And so it came to pass: although each of the five brothers became Earl of Pembroke, they all died without legitimate children and eventually their father’s property was divided between their sisters and the latters’ children, leading to the break-up of the great Marshall estate, just as the Bishop of Ferns had declared. 






Around 1207 Maud, eldest daughter of William Marshall and Isabel de Clare, married Hugh Bigod, third Earl of Norfolk: incidentally, it was through this marriage that the position of Earl Marshall of England would come to be held by the Dukes of Norfolk. Furthermore, as a result of the marriage, the Bigods came to own large areas of land in what is now County Carlow and when Roger, fifth Earl of Norfolk visited Ireland in 1279, it is thought that he embarked on constructing a large stronghold for himself, now known as Ballymoon Castle, the remains of which can be seen here. In his book on the Bigods during the 13th century, Marc Morris proposes that the building’s purpose was not intended to be defensive. ‘Built on a scale which presupposes a patron in need of extensive accommodation and with considerable resources at his disposal,’ Ballymoon was ‘intended to function as a residence more than a fortress.’ Morris points out that there is no ditch around the site and no projecting towers; the only breakfronts on the walls contained latrines. A cousin of the MacMurroughs, with whom he seems to have been on good terms, Roger Bigod did not face militant opposition on Carlow, hence there was no need for a protective citadel. 






Ballymoon Castle consists of a single square courtyard about 80 feet long on each side, the rough-hewn granite outer walls being some eight feet thick at the base and climbing 20 feet, although their uneven appearance indicates they were once higher and perhaps finished with crenellations and walks. The big, empty courtyard has the remains of buildings on each of its four sides, some of which indicate where doors or chimneypieces were once placed. The western wall has an arched gateway with portcullis grooves visible, and there are quite a few cross-shaped openings around the other walls. It may be that work here was never finished: by the autumn of 1280 Roger Bigod was back in England. And two years later, his cousins, Art and Muchertach MacMurrough, were murdered in Arklow on the instructions of the Justiciar of Ireland, Stephen de Fulbourn. When Roger Bigod died in 1306, despite two marriages, like his Marshall forebears he had no heirs, so the direct line ended, his lands were escheated to the crown and eventually bestowed on Thomas of Brotherton, Earl of Norfolk, a younger son of Edward I. Little is known thereafter of Ballymoon Castle’s history, but, having little defensive potential, it would appear to have been abandoned and left to fall into its present condition.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi




The scant remains of Lixnaw Court, County Kerry. From the mid-13th to the late 18th century, this was a seat of the FitzMaurices, Barons Kerry. In 1723 the 21st Baron, Thomas FitzMaurice, was created first Earl of Kerry: 30 years earlier, he had married Anne Petty, only daughter of Sir William Petty. The earl was a proud and arrogant man: according to his grandson, the first Earl of Shelburne, he ‘did not want the manners of the country nor the habits of his family to make him a tyrant. He was so by nature. He was the most severe character which can be imagined, obstinate and inflexible…His children did not love him, but dreaded him; his servants the same.’ This provincial plutocrat transformed Lixnaw where, wrote his younger son John FitzMaurice, he spent ‘great sums building and furnishing a very large mansion-house’ along with making many other improvements in the gardens and demesne. However, all his work had started to fall into decay even before the end of the century thanks to the disinterest and extravagance of the third Earl of Kerry. Following the latter’s death in 1818, what remained of the estate was inherited by a cousin, Henry Petty-FitzMaurice, third Marquess of Lansdowne, whose Kerry base was in the south of the county. In consequence, the once splendid house and gardens at Lixnaw were left to moulder, as can be seen in Cornelius Varley’s painting of 1842. Today, a few outer walls survive and, in the surrounding countryside, evidence of the first earl’s great landscaping enterprises, not least a long canal which would once have been a feature of the formal Baroque garden.



A Spouse’s Savings



In October 1981 Christie’s held an auction on its premises in London, offering the studio contents of an Irish artist who had died 40 years earlier and, until this sale, had been largely forgotten. The artist in question was Mildred Anne Butler, born into a gentry family in County Kilkenny in 1858. Following her father’s death in 1881, she trained in London and then travelled elsewhere in Europe to improve her technique, specialising in watercolour. By 1892 she was exhibiting with the Watercolour Society of Ireland and she also showed work at both the Royal Academy in London and the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin. Throughout her life, the same subjects recurred: primarily birds, animals such as cattle and garden scenes, usually recorded  from the immediate surroundings of Kilmurry, her family home in County Kilkenny. Here she lived until her death in October 1941 at the age of 83: although one of six children, she survived all her siblings, none of whom had offspring, and so she inherited the property. She bequeathed Kilmurry and its contents to a distant cousin,  Doreen Archer Houblon and it was only a few years after the latter’s death that the contents of Butler’s studio were offered for sale. It was an opportune moment, since this style of work had begun to come back into fashion: Edith Holden’s Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, which came out in 1977, had been a publishing sensation, selling over one million copies in its first year. And the work of another Irish watercolourist and contemporary of Mildred Anne Butler, Rose Barton, was also experiencing a revival in popularity. Ever since then, Kilmurry has been associated with Butler but the story of an earlier owner is just as interesting, if not more so. 





Kilmurry is a house that has been enlarged and altered on many occasions but the core of it, perhaps the section that forms the inner hall, is thought to date back to the 17th century, perhaps around the time that the lands here were granted to Colonel John Bushe. Originally an entrance hall with flanking reception rooms, what is today  the main drawing room appears to have been added around the mid-18th century by the colonel’s grandson, Reverend Thomas Bushe, Rector of Gowran, Prebendary of Inniscarra, and Chaplain of King’s College, Mitchelstown, Co. Cork. According to Richard Lalor Sheil, the Rev. Bushe ‘was in the enjoyment of a lucrative living, and being of an ancient family, which had established itself in Ireland in the reign of Charles the Second, he thought it incumbent upon him to live upon a scale of expenditure more consistent with Irish notions of dignity than English maxims of economy and good sense.’ In other words, he was inclined to allow expenditure to exceed income and in consequence fell badly into debt. In 1767 the Rev. Bushe and his wife Catherine had a son, Charles Kendal Bushe, whose middle name arose from the following circumstances. One night an elderly man called Kendal, who lived not far away on what is now the Mount Juliet estate, sought refuge at Kilmurry, having been attacked and robbed by highwaymen. So grateful was Mr Kendal for the assistance provided by the Bushes that, when he died, he left all his property to the family, on condition that the eldest son should bear his name. It will not come as a surprise that the Rev Bushe, owing to his impecunious state, subsequently sold this unexpected inheritance. Meanwhile his son Charles Kendal, became an extremely successful lawyer: in due course he would act as Solicitor-General for Ireland (1805-1822) and then Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench for Ireland (1822-1841). Unfortunately, as a young man he had signed some papers presented to him by his father without knowing what they contained: at the age of 21, he discovered that he was saddled with some £30,000 worth of parental debts. Kilmurry, which he adored, had to be sold and he left Ireland to avoid creditors. Meanwhile, the feckless Rev Bushe retired to his living in Mitchelstown. 





In December 1793 Charles Kendal Bushe married Anne Crampton and thanks to her dowry – and a loan from a friend – he was able to pay off his most pressing creditors and return to Ireland where his career flourished. Nevertheless, he was never rich and so, in 1814 when Kilmurry was once more offered for sale, he lacked the necessary funds to repurchase his old family home. That is, until his wife told him that she had saved all the money he had given her over the years to buy jewellery and other items: the sum was sufficient to cover the purchase price, and the Bushes now moved back to Kilmurry. It is likely that soon after this further alterations were made to the property. The  west-facing, five-bay building, its limestone parapet lined with urns, which had been added by the Rev Bushe was now flanked by single-storey wings with tripartite windows and dies surmounted by sphinxes. A new, severely neo-classical entrance was created on the north front with Doric pilasters and half-columns. Immediately inside is the hall, with the library to the right and the dining room to the right. Continuing through the house, the next space is a substantial inner hall (as mentioned, likely to be the oldest part of the building) with the drawing room to the right and staircase hall to the left, the latter leading to what were formerly service quarters. To the rear lies an orangery (once Mildred Anne Butler’s studio) which looks over the two-acre walled garden. Despite his passion for the place, after Charles Kendal Bushe died in 1843 his children sold Kilmurry, the new owner being Captain Henry Butler, father of Mildred Anne Butler and himself a talented artist. Creativity ran in the family, because the dining room in Kilmurry contains an extraordinary chimneypiece, elaborately carved by another of the captain’s daughters, Isabel Butler, together with a local carpenter. Unfortunately, following the death of Doreen Archer Houblon, all the contents of the house were sold, not just Mildred Anne Butler’s studio, but the furniture and some 5,000 books in the library. Kilmurry then went into a period of serious decline before being bought and wonderfully restored by the present owners. More recently they have placed the property on the market: perhaps the house awaits another Anne Kendal Bushe with her secret stash of funds…