Category Archives: Architectural History

Summer in Winter


Seen from the bridge across Upper Lough Erne to Inisherk Island, this is the hexagonal summer house at Crom Castle, County Fermanagh. According to an 1830s Ordnance Survey map, it stands on the site of an older schoolhouse, but that in turn may have been adapted from an 18th century building, the two-storey hexagonal building designed by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce ‘For Mr Creighton to be built on a Sunk Island in Lough Hern’, of which an undated drawing survives. In its present incarnation, the summer house dates from the second half of the 19th century.

In My End is My Beginning

‘In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.’
So opens East Coker, the second of T.S.Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’. Apposite lines as more of our architectural heritage has been lost or is imperiled. But this, the first day of a new year, is an occasion for optimism, to feel that 2020 will be better than its predecessor, and that circumstances can be improved. Disappointed in the past, now is a moment to embrace the future, and to remember the lines with which Eliot closes the same quartet:
‘Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.’

The Irish Aesthete sends every good wish for 2020 to all friends and followers.


Photographs of Colbinstown Graveyard, County Kildare. 

There is Good Limestone



From Samuel Lewis’ Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837)
‘BEAGH or ST. ANNE’S, a parish, in the barony of KILTARTAN, county of GALWAY, and province of CONNAUGHT, containing, with part of the post-town of Gort, 5343 inhabitants. This parish is situated on the confines of the county of Clare, and on the road from Galway and Loughrea to Ennis. A monastery of the third order of Franciscans was founded here about the year 1441, but by whom is unknown: in an inquisition of the 28th of Elizabeth it is denominated a cell or chapel, and its possessions appear to have consisted of half a quarter of land, with its appurtenances and tithes, which had been long under concealment. The parish comprises 12,331 statute acres, as applotted under the tithe act, and there is some bog; agriculture is improved, and there is good limestone.’






From Fahey, J., D.D., V.G. The History and Antiquities of the Diocese of Kilmacduagh (1893)
‘On the island of Lough Cutra lake there are also some interesting ruins- a church and castle amongst others, on the history of which no light has yet been cast. We find, from an “Inquisition” taken before John Crofton, Esq., at Athenry, on the 1st of October 1584, that Richard, second Earl of Clanricarde, was then seized of “Beagh and 4 qrts of land, and the ruined castle of Lough Cutra, with an island in the Loug aforesaid.” It may be desirable to add that the Beagh referred to is the old ruined church on the Gort river, about two miles east of town, which had been long previously the parish church of Beagh. There can be little doubt that the lands referred to were its confiscated property.’


Off with His Head


A stained glass window in the chancel of St John the Baptist, Duhill, County Tipperary. It is one of two designed and made by Harry Clarke for this little parish church. That to the left of the altar depicts a rather insipid Bernadette receiving a vision of the Virgin at Lourdes. In contrast that on the right-hand side is altogether more earthy (and more gorgeously coloured) and, inspired by the saint to whom the building is dedicated, shows the moment after his death when Salome beholds the newly-executed John’s head on a salver, observed by Herod and Herodias. Dating from 1925, the window commemorates local woman Margaret Byrne and her two brothers, both of whom had been priests..

Pressed by the Moon


Pressed by the Moon, mute arbitress of tides,
While the loud equinox its power combines,
The sea no more its swelling surge confines,
But o’er the shrinking land sublimely rides.





The wild blast, rising from the western cave,
Drives the huge billows from their heaving bed;
Tears from their grassy tombs the village dead,
And breaks the silent sabbath of the grave!





With shells and sea-weed mingled, on the shore,
Lo! their bones whiten in the frequent wave;
But vain to them the winds and waters rave;
They hear the warring elements no more:
While I am doomed, by life’s long storm oppressed,
To gaze with envy on their gloomy rest.


Sonnet Written in the Churchyard at Middleton (1789) by Charlotte Smith
Photographs of Rathfran Friary, County Mayo.
Remembering all those no longer with us to celebrate Christmas

With Panoramic Views


Looking rather like a lighthouse after the tide has (considerably) receded, this is the Tower (or Pillar, or Spire) of Lloyd, County Meath. A plaque on the building reads ‘This pillar was designed by Henry Aaron Baker Esq. architect, was executed by Mr. Joseph Beck stone cutter, Mr. Owen Mc Cabe head mason, Mr. Bartle Reilly overseer Anno 1791’. One hundred feet high and with 164 steps to its summit, the cut limestone tower was commissioned by Thomas Taylour, first Earl of Bective, perhaps in memory of his father. But the octagonal lantern at the top served as a signalling station during times of unrest and a viewing platform from which could be seen much of the surrounding landscape. The name of the site incidentally derives from a Colonel Thomas Lloyd who during the Williamite Wars encamped on the hill here with a number of soldiers.

In Poor Health


Captain Nicholas Pollard was one of the many adventurous Englishmen who came to Ireland in the latter part of the 16th century and was rewarded by the government with a grant of land. Originally from Devon, Pollard arrived here as part of the Earl of Essex’s ill-fated expedition in 1599, but whereas his commander returned home in ignominy, Pollard remained and received land and the castle at Mayne in County Westmeath. His heir, also called Nicholas, settled slightly further to the east where he built a new castle and founded a town, which he duly named Castlepollard. His son Walter carried out further improvements in the area, having received from Charles II a patent for holding fairs and a weekly market in the new town. Walter’s son, another Walter, although he had served in Charles II’s army and was attached to the Stuart cause, nevertheless supported William III and in the aftermath of the Battle of the Boyne became a Member of Parliament, as well as being charged to raise supplies for the crown in Westmeath for a number of years. He died in 1718 and having been predeceased by his only son, the estate passed to his daughter Letitia who in 1696 had married Major Charles Hampson; the latter duly took his wife’s family name, Successive generations of Pollards then followed, none of whom made much of an impression outside the immediate locale, although in the 19th century some of them enjoyed respectable army careers. The family remained in residence until after the death of the last male heir, Francis Edward Romulus Pollard-Urquhart in 1915: two decades later the house and 110 acres were sold to a Roman Catholic religious order, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart.





Standing on the outskirts of Castlepollard, the Pollards’ former residence is called Kinturk House. The core of the building is believed to date from c.1760 when it would have replaced an older castle either here or on an adjacent site. This work was undertaken because in 1763 the estate’s then-owner William Pollard married Isabella, daughter and heiress of John Morres. However, one must assume her inheritance was not enormous since Kinturk was only room deep. This changed in the 1820s when the house was enlarged and remodeled for its next resident, William Dutton Pollard by architect Charles Robert Cockerell, who had come to Ireland to work on another commission for the Naper family at Loughcrew. Cockerell doubled the depth of Kinturk and gave the garden front of the building a more imposing presence by increasing the number of bays (from five to seven) with a central breakfront. He also added a single-storey Ionic porch to the façade, and single storey extensions at either end. Inside, the most notable feature is the cantilevered Portland stone staircase with brass banisters but at least one of the ground floor reception rooms retains pretty rococo plasterwork from the 1760s.





Within a few years of buying Kinturk House, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart embarked on a substantial building programme in the grounds, where they erected, among other structures, a chapel linked to the old residence by a corridor and a free-standing three-storey block intended to serve as a 120-bed Mother and Baby Home. All the new buildings, constructed between 1938-41 was designed in a starkly brutalist style by Dublin architect Thomas Joseph Cullen, who throughout a long career worked extensively for the Catholic church. The cost of this project was some £76,000, much of the money coming from the Hospital Sweepstakes Fund. Called St Peter’s, the home operated for 35 years and like other similar establishments elsewhere in the country – some of them also operated by the same religious order – has in recent years rightly been subjected to public scrutiny, not least because of the horrific conditions in which many young women and their new-born infants were required to live. Following the closure of the home, in 1971 the site was sold to the Midland Health Board, and then, like so many other buildings across the country, became the responsibility of the Health Service Executive (HSE). Kinturk/St Peter’s thereafter provided residential care for the disabled until its closure was announced in 2014, shortly before a highly condemnatory inspection report on the facility was issued by the Health Information and Quality Authority. Today, two detached bungalows provide accommodation for ten residents. The rest of the site sits empty and neglected, the various properties visibly falling into disrepair. The original Kinturk House, of evident architectural merit, is closed up and increasingly dilapidated. This is, unfortunately, yet another instance of a state authority failing to look after the buildings supposed to be in its care and leaving it in poor health. As always, ultimately the citizens of Ireland (who own the place) will be the losers.

A Casual Approach


This country is so replete with ruins that sometimes they are treated quite casually. This is the case with what survives of a late 15th century Franciscan friary in Roscrea, County Tipperary, designated a National Monument. Access to the present, early 19th century Roman Catholic church is gained via the base of the 60-foot former bell tower, under which cars now drive.


Founded by Maolrouny O’Carroll and his wife Bibiana in 1477, the friary lasted barely 100 years before being closed down as part of that era’s general suppression of religious houses. Today the most substantial surviving portions are the bell tower (onto which various fragments from the site have been cemented), the north wall of the church and the latter’s east window, although this is largely blocked by the gable end of a house built right against it.

Crumbling Away



The ivy-smothered ruins of Bruree Castle, County Limerick. It has been claimed this was originally built by the Knights Templar in the 12th century, but more probably the ‘castle’ is a 15th century tower house erected by the de Lacys, a family of Norman origin which had settled in the area. The building was badly damaged by English forces during the first Desmond Rebellion (1569-73), which seemingly was when its upper storey was lost. How long it will survive is open to conjecture, since sections of the masonry have fallen off in recent years. Sadly, the adjacent, now-disused, Church of Ireland church is likewise in a perilous condition.