Category Archives: Castle

Showing What Can be Done


Forty years ago, in 1985, the artist and architectural historian Peter Pearson got in touch with the Congregation of Christian Brothers, a religious order which had come to own Drimnagh Castle, once surrounded by forest but by then almost lost in Dublin suburban housing. In John D’Alton’s History of the County of Dublin (1838), the building is described as occupying ‘a spot of much romantic beauty, overlooking at the east the city and bay, and at north, the Park, Castleknock and Clondalkin, while towards the south the view is bounded by the mountains of the county of Dublin, presenting a dark and solemn aspect, congenial to the decaying splendour of the edifice.’ Alas, the same romantic views are no longer to be found today. The building’s history dates back to 1215 when the lands of Drimnagh and Terenure were granted by King John to Hugh de Berneval and when the latter died without issue, these grants were passed to his brother Reginald, whose descendants, their name eventually becoming Barnewall, came to be one of the most significant families in this part of the country: Raymond Barnewall, 21st Baron Trimlestown died last year and, having no known heirs, so ended one of the oldest Irish titles, dating back to 1461 (see Fallen Out of Use « The Irish Aesthete). The Barnewalls remained in the castle until the first decade of the 17th century when Elizabeth Barnewall, heiress to the property, married a cousin, James Barnewall of Bremore (see A Work in Progress « The Irish Aesthete) after which Drimnagh was let on a 99-year least to Sir Adam Loftus, nephew and namesake of the Archbishop of Dublin who had been responsible for building Rathfarnham Castle just a few miles to the south-east (see A Whiter Shade of Pale « The Irish Aesthete). A century later, however, Drimnagh Castle – like Bremore Castle – was sold to Henry Perry, Earl of Shelburne and so passed into the ownership of the Marquesses of Lansdowne. Both buildings were let to a succession of tenants, in the case of Drimnagh Castle until 1904 when it was bought by a successful dairy farmer and Dublin City councillor, Joseph Hatch. He undertook considerable restoration work on the property, used by his family as a summer residence until the 1950s when it passed into the possession of the Christian Brothers. While the order initially used the castle as a school, they subsequently moved into a purpose-built establishment on the land. As a result, the old building was left unoccupied (except for a collection of fowl kept there by one member of the religious community) and gradually fell into disrepair. Its future looked uncertain and, like so many other old properties in the greater Dublin region, Drimagh Castle might have been lost had not Peter Pearson intervened. 






The evolution of Drimnagh Castle from its origins into what can be seen today is complicated and, on more than one occasion, unclear. As was so often the case, the building likely began as a wooden structure, this in due course replaced by stone. The oldest part of the castle is a stocky keep access to which is through a single, low Gothic door on the east side with a typical murder hole directly above. This entrance leads to an undercroft, notable for retaining reedmarks on its vaulted ceiling; analysis of these might be able to confirm a date for when the keep was constructed. In the 18th century, this space was converted into a kitchen, with the insertion of a number of ovens and a large open fireplace. Stone steps at the north and south ends of the undercroft lead to the great hall immediately above. To the immediate north and rising one storey higher, the tower and gatehouse are thought to have been added in the 16th century. Further substantial changes occurred during the 18th century when many of the building’s windows were made larger so as to bring more light into the rooms. On the east side an external stone staircase was added giving direct access to the great hall through a cut-limestone doorcase. It may be that the moat, a parallelogram and something of a rarity among surviving Irish castles, similarly dates from the 18th century when the property was responsible for a number of mills in the area, their mechanism driven by the water which then fed into the river Camac. In one corner of the grounds is a little square battlemented folly, again likely an addition from the Georgian period: its west face overlooking the moat incorporates a late medieval window and later granite doorcase with arched light above, both of which appear to have come from elsewhere. When the Hatches took over the castle in the early 1900s, they made further changes to the buildings, not least inserting brick pediments above many windows and doors, as well as taking out many of the 18th century sash windows. They also converted a 17th century barn into a set of stables and rebuilt the coach house on the opposite side of the rear courtyard, giving its roofline the same curved gables seen on the castle roofline.






When Peter Pearson first approached the Christian Brothers 40 years ago about undertaking work on Drimnagh Castle, the building was in a pitiful state and looked unlikely to have any viable future. Nevertheless, thanks to a grant of £3,000 from Dublin Corporation and assisted by a number of state and charitable agencies as well as a voluntary local committee, work began on the site in 1986. Writing in the Irish Arts Review three years ago, Pearson has described what followed as employing the Italian concept of restauro: ‘which implies both conservation of existing structure and appropriate replacement of elements beyond repair. It implies an artistic rather than a moralistic approach to giving old buildings new life and it means that there has to be an element of compromise if historic buildings are to live on with new uses.’ It is unlikely that were such a project to be initiated today that such an approach would necessarily be permitted, but had it not been adopted at the time, then most probably Drimnagh Castle would no longer stand today. Inevitably, compromise meant not all features of the building’s history could be represented. The best example of this is the great hall which, in the 18th century, had been split into two reception rooms reached via a panelled staircase. The inevitable question arose: ought this later intervention be retained or should the space be returned to what was believed to have been its original appearance? The latter option was chosen, but this meant a degree of conjecture since so little of the material fabric survived. What can now be seen is to a large extent new, not least the hall’s roof entirely constructed of green Irish oak and assembled on site by trainee carpenters. The same was true of the carved gallery running around the upper level of the gallery; here can be admired portrait effigies of many of those involved in the enterprise (including Pearson) which serve as trusses for the roof. The floor is covered in tiles made for the space and based on original medieval tiles found at Swords Castle, County Dublin (see Palatial « The Irish Aesthete), while the window glass was all made for the hall. Outside, in what had been an empty, neglected area of ground at the back of the site, a formal garden with parterres of box was laid out. Today on lease from the religious order and still dependent on voluntary support for its daily maintenance, Drimnagh Castle is an outstanding example of what can be achieved by persistence, dedication and imagination. As so often, much remains to be done around the building and its grounds, but 40 years after Peter Pearson first proposed the property’s rescue, it continues to deserve accolades and amply repays a visit. 

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A Somewhat Institutional Air



By the late mediaeval period, the lands now occupied by the Castlewellan estate in County Down had come into the possession of the Magennis family. In 1542 Donal Óg Magennis travelled to London where he received a knighthood from Henry VIII at Greenwich Palace. At the time he was living in the area of Castlewellan, and although the precise location of his residence is unknown, it may have been on one of the islands of the lake lying directly below the present castle. In his account of a journey through this part of Ulster in 1602-3, Captain Josias Bodley wrote ‘We now came to the island of Magennis [Castlewellan] where, alighting from our horses, we met Master Morrison, with many others. They had tarried there, at least three hours, expecting our arrival, and in the meantime drank ale and usquebaugh with the Lady Sara, the daughter of Tyrone, and wife of the aforesaid Magennis, a truly beautiful woman. We also drank twice or thrice, and after we had duly kissed her, we each prepared for our journey.’ The beautiful Lady Sara mentioned here was a daughter of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone and wife of Sir Arthur Magennis, later created first Viscount Iveagh. During the course of the 17th century and its many upheavals, somehow the Magennises managed to retain their lands at Castlewellan and indeed, descendants of the family remained there until 1741 when penury required that it be offered at public auction, where the freehold was bought by one William Annesley, a Dublin-based barrister and Member of Parliament whose family had already been leasing the property. 





Created first Baron Annesley and later Viscount Glerawly, William Annesley was the great-grandson of Francis Annesley, first Viscount Valentia, who had moved to Ireland in the first decade of the 17th century and was involved in the Ulster Plantations. Three years before buying the Castlewellan estate, William had married Lady Anne Beresford, a daughter of the Earl of Tyrone. Mrs Delany, who knew the couple well (her husband, Dr Patrick Delany, being Dean of Down), wrote ‘’they are very rich and know it, and spend their lives in increasing not enjoying their fortune; but he is a very honest man in all his dealings, still would be more agreeable as well as more useful if he thought less of his possessions. His lady suits him exactly; she does not want sense, and is comical enough in a satirical way.’ The couple made Castlewellan their principal country residence, building a house south-west of the present building, as well as the Grange, an extensive series of outbuildings, most of which still survive: while walking around the estate in 1758, Mrs Delany declared them ‘indeed very fine. Three large courts: round the first, which is arched round a kind of’ piazza, are houses for all his carriages and over them his granaries; the next court are stables and cow houses, and over them haylofts; the third court two such barns as I ncver saw, floored with oak and finished in the most convenient manner for all the purposes of winnowing etc and in that court are the stands for hay and corn.’ What form the main house took is unknown, since it was replaced by Annesley’s heir Francis (created first Earl Annesley in 1789), the new residence being called Castlewellan Cottage, a long single-storey (or single-storey over basement) building with shallow end bows. This remained the family’s home until 1851 when the estate was inherited by William Richard Annesley, the fourth earl, who commissioned a new mansion from the Scottish architect William Burn. The latter’s patron did not have long to enjoy his new residence, however, since he died in 1874 at the age of 44 still unmarried and so both the title and Castlewellan estate accordingly passed to his younger brother, Lt-Col Hugh Annesley, who had hitherto had a career in the army but now settled to live in County Down where he was a pioneering photographer and, like his sibling before him, an ardent gardener (see In Circles « The Irish Aesthete). It was during the second half of the 19th century that Castlewellan’s exceptional arboretum became established, its collection  of some  3,000 species of rare trees, plants and shrubs being among the finest in Ireland. Unfortunately the sixth earl died in 1914 at the age of 30 and responsibility for Castlewellan passed to his eldest sister Lady Mabel Annesley, who in 1927 transferred it to her son Gerald Francis Sowerby (who took the Annesley surname) at the time of his first marriage. He retained the property until 1967 when it was acquired by the Forest Service of the Department of Agriculture. Two years later the grounds were opened as a forest park, but the house itself remained empty and suffered from a terrorist attack in 1973. It was subsequently leased to a Christian organisation which since then has used the building as a retreat and conference centre





By the time he was commissioned to design Castlewellan, William Burn had already worked for a number of Irish clients, being responsible for the likes of Muckross House, County Kerry (see Institutionalised « The Irish Aesthete) and Bangor Castle, County Down (see Uncertain Future II « The Irish Aesthete). Built at a cost of just over £18,000 and standing on a terrace above the lake with dense woodland to the rear, granite-faced Castlewellan has, as noted by Philip Smith, a somewhat institutional air. The potentially monotonous south-facing five-bay garden front, of three storeys with dormer attic windows, is relieved at either end by a four-stage square tower to the east and a five-stage circular tower to the west, both these carrying bartizans. The west front side shows more variety, with a four-storey gabled bay at the northern end and, attached to this, a slender round turret with pitched roof. There was formerly a conservatory on this side, which may explain the rather odd first-floor bow window found here. The main entrance is on the east side, another stocky square tower with bartizans and battlements. Directly above the doorcase of dressed stone is a tablet carrying the Annesley armorials. Immediately inside the door is a steep flight of stairs, not unlike that found in the Brownslow House, Lurgan (see This Beautiful Mansion « The Irish Aesthete). Unlike the latter property, however, in this instance and stairs lead to a galleried central hall, this space lit by a series of windows on the north side. Off the hall and facing south are the principal reception rooms – drawing room, library and dining room – all with the same Jacobethan ceilings. The library still has its elaborately carved bookcases but otherwise almost all the original decoration, and furnishings, are no longer in the building. The main staircase, located off the west end of the hall, was badly damaged when Castlewellan was bombed in 1973 with the loss of its window’s armorial glass. Upstairs, most of the bedrooms are now used as dormitories for the religious organisation’s retreats. While the present decor may not be to everyone’s taste, it is important to appreciate that the building is being well maintained and kept in good repair, ensuring, unlike so many other such properties in Ireland, that Castlewellan survives into the future.



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Time for a Makeover


The original castle in Belfast is believed to have stood in what is now the centre of the city and may have been constructed by the Normans in the late 12th/early 13th century. A small urban settlement grew up around its walls but the castle was subject to frequent attack and may have been rebuilt on a number of occasions; in the later-medieval period it was held by a branch of the O’Neill family. During the 16th century it was seized and lost on a number of occasions by both the FitzGeralds, Earls of Kildare and by English forces. The Elizabethan adventurer Sir John Chichester, Governor of Carrickfergus Castle, managed to take Belfast Castle in July 1597 but was then killed the following November in a battle against the MacDonnells. It was his brother Sir Arthur Chichester who in 1611, having been gifted Belfast and its surrounding lands by James I, built a new castle, likely on the site of the old one. Dying without an heir, his estates were inherited by a younger brother, Edward, created first Baron and then Viscount Chichester. In turn his son was created Earl of Donegall but again since he had no heir, both estates and titles went sideways to a nephew, Arthur Chichester. The family continued to occupy Belfast Castle until 1708 when it was destroyed by fire, killing three of the fourth earl’s sisters and a servant. It was left a ruin, and the Chichesters left Belfast, not returning for almost a century.





In 1802 Arthur Chichester, the hopelessly indebted second Marquess of Donegall, chose to escape his creditors in England by coming to Belfast, where for a time he rented a house on the corner of what are now Donegall Place and Donegall Square before moving to Ormeau Park. Here he occupied the existing ‘cottage’ but by 1823 had raised sufficient funds to commission a new Tudor-Gothic residence Ormeau House, designed by William Vitruvius Morrison. Following his death in 1844, the property was abandoned by the third marquess, its contents auctioned in 1857 and the house demolished in 1869, the grounds since becoming a public park. By that date, work was well underway on a new Belfast Castle, although this latest iteration was constructed nowhere near its predecessors, instead standing a few miles outside and above the city on the slopes of Cave Hill in the grounds of what had formerly been the family’s deer park. It appears that the project cost considerably more than the sum of £11,000 anticipated by Lord Donegall and that therefore he turned for financial assistance to his son-in-law, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, future eighth Earl of Shaftesbury and husband of the marquess’s only surviving child, Harriet. She therefore inherited what remained of the Chichester estates on her father’s death and these in turn passed to her son, the ninth Earl of Shaftesbury who spent a considerable amount of time in Belfast Castle until 1934 when he gifted the building and demesne to the city of Belfast. A great deal of the latter was subsequently developed as housing but the area around the castle was preserved as a public park. As for the castle, it was used for a variety of activities such as wedding receptions, dances and afternoon teas. The building closed in 1978 for a £2 million refurbishment programme, reopening a decade later, since when it has continued to provide much the same services and facilities as before. 




Largely completed in 1870, Belfast Castle might be considered the ultimate example of Ulster Scots Baronial architecture, aided by its superlative location on sloping ground with views down to the harbour and thence out to sea. The building was designed by the local firm of Lanyon, Lynn and Lanyon with John Lanyon, son of the founder Sir Charles Lanyon, now widely accepted as being primarily responsible. Faced in local pink Scrabo sandstone with Grifnock sandstone dressings from Scotland, the castle is a riot of towers and turrets, stepped gables and bracketed oriel windows. The main garden front is distinguished by a serpentine French Renaissance-style stone staircase: designed by an unknown architect, this was added to the building in 1894 by the ninth Earl of Shaftesbury. After the elaborate exterior, the castle’s interiors prove a disappointment, with much of the decoration being mundane in character and looking as though copied by Lanyon from the most uninteresting of pattern books. This may be due to the fact that the enterprise had by then gone over-budget and therefore economies needed to be made. Without question, the best feature is the inner hall, which contains a Jacobean-style carved oak staircase climbing up three sides of the space to a top-lit bedroom gallery on the floor above. Unfortunately a bar has been inserted into the base of the staircase and this epitomises the castle’s current furnishing, which displays all the flair of a provincial hotel: decor by Basil Fawlty. Ugly light fittings, ill-placed pictures and tired seating don’t help. While the gardens of Belfast Castle appear to receive ample attention, its rooms are badly in need of another, and more considered, makeover. 


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Boldly and Picturesquely Seated



‘Dundrum Castle is usually supposed to have been erected for the Knights Templar by the renowned Sir John de Courcey, and that powerful body possessed it till the abolition of the order in the year 1313. It was afterwards granted to the Prior of Down, who held it, with a small manor adjoining, till the final suppression of religious orders; and the reversion of this house and manor, with the yearly rent of 6l. 13s. 6d. reserved out of it, was granted to Gerald, Earl of Kildare.’
From the Dublin Penny Journal, No.36, Vol.1, March 2 1833.





‘This Castle was granted to the family of Magennis; on their forfeiture, it became the property of the Earl of Ardglass, and afterwards was in the possession of the Lord Viscount Blundell; the ruins are of an irregular multangular ſorm, with a fine round tower, which is about thirty-five feet diameter in the inside.”  Thus far Mr. Archdall. In addition to which, Harris says, “When the Castle was in repair it often proved a good guard to the pass, and as often an offensive neighbour to the English planted in Lecale, according to the hands that possessed it. Anno 1517, the Earl of Kildare, then Lord Deputy, marched into Lecale, and took it by storm; it being garriſoned at that time by the Irish, who had driven out the English ſome time before. It was again possessed and repaired by the Magennises, and re-taken by the Lord Deputy Gray, with seven castles more in Lecale, anno 1538. lt afterwards got into the hands of Phelim McEver Magennis, who was obliged to yield it to the Lord Mountjoy on the 16th of June in the year 1601, It met with another fate during the progress of the war of 1641, when it was demolished by the order of Cromwell, though then garrisoned by Protestants, and has ever since been suffered to run entirely to ruin.’
From The Antiquities of Ireland, Vol.1 by Francis Grose (1791)





‘The old Castle of Dundrum, boldly and picturesquely seated on a high rock covered with verdure, commanded in the ages of warfare the entrance to the harbour — if to the inner Bay, or rather the estuary of the Blackstaff Water, the appellation may be applied. This was considered one of the finest castles erected by the first Anglo-Norman adventurers; and its ivy-mantled ruins contribute materially to the strikingly romantic features of the landscape. These ruins consist of a great circular keep or tower, with detached fragments of towers, and ruins of other outworks, and a barbican. At a little distance southward of the castle are the mouldering remains of a large mansion, partly a fortalice and partly a dwelling-house of the sort in use in the sixteenth century. From these ruins we command a wider sweep of the magnificent scenery described at Newcastle.’
From A Picturesque Handbook to Carlingford Bay by Robert Greer (1846)


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Coming to a Bad End



After Monday’s tale of Barryscourt Castle, here is another property that formerly belonged to the once-mighty Barry family: Buttevant Castle, County Cork. Thought to date back to the early 13th century, this would have been one of their first strongholds but in due course they moved their principal residence elsewhere and Buttevant fell into decline. As indeed did the Barrys. In the late 18th century the penultimate Earl of Barrymore, a close friend of the Prince of Wales, was a notorious rake, gambler and bare-knuckle boxer. His wild ways gained him the nickname of Hellgate while his younger brother Henry, who inherited the title after his sibling’s death at the age of 23, had a clubfoot and accordingly was called Cripplegate. Meanwhile, the third sibling Augustus, despite being an Anglican clergyman, became so addicted to gambling that he was known as Newgate, supposedly because this was the only debtors’ prison in which he had not spent time. And the trio’s only sister, Lady Caroline Barry, swore with such frequency and proficiency that she was called Billingsgate, after the foul-mouthed fishwives of that market. Between the four of them, they managed to dissipate their once-great estates in Ireland, including the extensive lands around Buttevant Castle, which was bought by Scottish entrepreneur John Anderson, whose son gave the building its present appearance around 1810. Occupied until the start of the last century, it was then abandoned and has since fallen into a ruinous state.



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Reopened



The Barry family can trace its links with Ireland back to 1183 when the Cambro-Norman knight Philip de Barry arrived here accompanied by his brother Gerald – otherwise known as the chronicler Giraldus Cambrensis – and a number of followers to take possession of extensive lands in what is now County Cork. The Barrys would go on to establish a number of bases throughout the region, one of which lay a few miles to the immediate east of Cork city and came to be known as Barryscourt. Formerly located by a long-since silted inlet to Cork harbour, there is evidence of a watermill having been built here as far back as the 7th century, while signs of more substantial occupation, perhaps an early fortification, are thought to date from c.1200. However, the present castle is believed to date from the late 14th/early 15th century, some time after the Norman keep but predating the subsequently ubiquitous tower house.






In 1581 Barryscourt Castle was inherited by David de Barry, 18th Baron Barry and fifth Viscount Buttevant whose father James had died in Dublin Castle, following his participation in the second Desmond Rebellion. It would appear that around this time David de Barry deliberately ‘defaced and despoiled’ the building in order to prevent it falling into the hands of Sir Walter Raleigh who coveted the property and, indeed, briefly occupied it. Following the suppression of the rebellion, in 1583 de Barry was able to regain possession of Barryscourt and embarked on an extensive programme of repair and improvement, so that a considerable part of what can be seen today dates from that time. This includes the substantial bawn wall measuring 54 by 48 metres around the castle, with substantial towers on the south-east, north-east and north-west corners, the last of these containing a hall and garderobe. Along the south wall are a number of farm buildings dating from the 19th century by which time the castle had long since been abandoned by the original owners.
David de Barry seems to have made this his main residence: in 1606, Sir John Davies, solicitor-general for Ireland, wrote ‘From Youghall we went to Cork, and dined by the way with the Viscount Barrie, who, at his castle at Barriecourt, gave us civil and plentiful entertainment.’ However, after de Barry’s death in 1617, his grandson David, future first Earl of Barrymore, chose to make another property, Castlelyons, the family’s principle seat (for more on this castle, see Decline and Fall « The Irish Aesthete).






Measuring some 15.3 by 10.7 metres the rectangular tower house at Barryscourt is one of the largest of its kind in Ireland, thought to be exceeded only by those at Bunratty, County Clare and Blarney, County Cork. As is common with such buildings, there was only one point of access, a door with pointed arch at the northern end of the east wall. This leads into a small lobby, with a staircase to the immediate north, leading to the first floor. Remaining on the entry level, much of the rest of the space is given over to a large chamber with pointe vault and lit only by deeply-set narrow windows to ensure as much protection as possible from external attack. The limited lighting on this floor contrasts with that above which is covered by a barrel-vault, replacing an earlier pointed vault, of which evidence remains survives at the south end. Here are somewhat larger windows, as well as a simple fireplace on the west wall. Smaller rooms to the north of this space served perhaps as kitchens and garderobes. The second floor holds the castle’s great hall, lit by much larger windows, that on the north wall carrying the date 1586. The great limestone chimneypiece carries the date 1588 and the initials DB, for David de Barry, and ER, for his first wife Ellen Roche. Also on this level is a vaulted chamber that served as a private chapel for the family, while above it was a bedroom for their use. Although no longer occupied by the Barrys, the building appears to have suffered damage during the Confederate Wars of the 1640s before the property passed into the hands of the Coppinger family (for more information on this family, see Holding Court « The Irish Aesthete) who built a house here, since gone. The castle itself fell into ruin and remained in this condition until 1987 and the establishment of a charity, the Barryscourt Trust, for the purpose of conserving and developing the site. The building subsequently passed into the care of the Office of Public Works which undertook further work before closing ten years ago. Happily, having undergone further renovation, Barryscourt Castle reopened to the public last month and – judging by a recent visit – looks to be a highly popular addition to heritage properties in this part of the country.



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A Work in Progress


‘Bremore, 9th June 1783, the castle of Bremore about a mile N.of Balbriggan is situated on a rising ground very near the sea and commands a delightful prospect therof. It seems rather a modern building with good limestone quoins,window frames, munnions etc,the door on the W,side is particularly neat,ornamented on each side with pilaster wch support a suitable pediment in the space of wch are two coat of arms parted and pale Vizt-Ermine, a border engrailed on the sinister side-Barnewall and a fess between 5 martins 3 and 2, on the dexter side.The lower part of this case. is very strong and arched in a very irregular manner and the whole appears to me to have been not many years ago inhabited. Besides a number of garden walls and such like inclosures, still to be traced, are the walls of a Chapel in which is nothing remarkable…..‘
Antiquary Austin Cooper, 1783






Located some twenty miles north of Dublin and overlooking the Irish Sea, Bremore is supposed to have been the location of a monastic settlement founded by St Molaga, a Welshman traditionally said to have introduced bee-keeping into Ireland. The ruins of a late-medieval church called St Molaga’s are located to the immediate south of Bremore Castle for which it served as a manorial chapel. As for the castle, or at least the lands on which it now stands, the earliest reference appears to date from c.1300 when one Willam Rosel de Brimor is referred to in the Calendar of Documents Relating to Ireland. More definitely, in 1316 Wolfran de Barnewall married Nichola, daughter of Robert de Clahull, and through this alliance acquired large tracts of land in north county Dublin. The Barnewalls have been mentioned here before (see Fallen Out of Use « The Irish Aesthete. Incidentally, the 21st and last Baron Trimlestown died last year). Wolfran and his descendants were a cadet branch of this family. By the time of his son Reginald’s death some time before 1395, the Barnewalls were being described as lords of Bremore, Balrothery and Balbriggan, although their main residence was Drimnagh Castle, situated a couple of miles west of central Dublin.
In an inquisition of 1567 the estate at Bremore is stated to have consisted of ‘a castle, 8 messuages or buildings, a dovecote, 8 gardens and 132 acres’ and to have been held by Edward Barnewall of Drimnagh, ‘as of his manor of Balrothery.’ This is the earliest reference to a castle being located here.  A mid-16th century limestone mantel, now housed in St Macculin’s church but thought to have originally been made for the castle, celebrates the marriage of Edward Barnewall’s son James to Margaret St Lawrence, whose family lived at Howth Castle. The Barnewalls remained Roman Catholic during the Confederate Wars of the 1640s and in the Civil Survey carried out during the following decade, the property of Matthew Barnewall, ‘Irish Papist’, was described as containing ‘one burnt castle with a great barne and eight tenements, one orchard & parke with some young ash trees.’ His son James regained the estate in 1663 and presumably refurbished the building. However, he – or perhaps his son – had no male heirs, only a daughter Eleanor, who married Walter Bagenal in 1706. The link with the Barnewalls then ended as Bremore and its surrounding lands were sold for £7,000 to Henry Petty, Earl of Shelburne, from whom the property passed to the Petty-Fitzmaurices, Marquesses of Lansdowne. 






No longer occupied by its owners but instead let to tenants, Bremore Castle gradually fell into decay. Austin Cooper’s report of the building has already been cited. In 1837 Samuel Lewis noted ‘the ruins of Bremore castle, the ancient seat of a branch of the Barnewall family, consisting of some of the out-buildings and part of a chapel, with a burial ground, which is still used by some of the inhabitants’. John D’Alton in 1844 referred to ‘the ancient castle, of which traces are yet discernible’ and commanging ‘that sublime and extensive prospect over land and sea.’ By this time the castle was occupied by a tenant called John King and his descendants remained there until 1926, although Bremore Castle and its surrounding lands had been sold by the fifth Marquess of Lansdowne to the Land Commission in 1904. Another family acquired the building and remained there until finally the old building came into the possession of Dublin County Council in 1984. A decade later, following the break-up of that authority, the newly-created Fingal County Council became responsible for Bremore Castle. Since then, a programme of reconstruction, incorporating the opportunity to train stonemasons and other craftsmen and using traditional materials and methods, has been proceeding on the site. At the time of its initial construction in the 15th/16th century, Bremore Castle consisted of a rectangular hall-house with eastern flanking tower, a two storey extension being introduced on the north-western facade in the late 16th – early 17th century. Not a lot of this survived into the late 20th century. Today it has been rebuilt to an idealised version of a fortified house based on a sketch of the western view of the castle made by Austin Cooper in 1783, with a number of conjectural embellishments to both exterior and interior, the latter’s chimneypieces, doors and window openings in large measure being new additions inspired by examples of fortified houses from the 15th to 17th centuries surviving elsewhere in the country. It has been a long-running project and one that has yet to be finished. 


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Beyond Balief


The histories of some Irish buildings are easier to trace than others. The origins and owners of Balief Castle, County Kilkenny prove particularly elusive. It is commonly stated that the castle, actually another late-medieval tower house, was constructed by a member of the Shortall family. The Shortalls were of Norman origin, and settled in this part of the country in the late 13th century: a townland is still called Shortallstown. The Shortalls allied themselves with another, more powerful, dynasty, the Graces, Barons of Courtstown, and this helped to assure the possession of their lands. Both the Graces and the Shortalls remained loyal to the Roman Catholic faith and to the Stuart cause. In 1689, the then Baron of Courtstown raised and equipped a regiment of foot at his own expense to support James II during the Williamite Wars, and Thomas Shortall joined this force. When the baron died the following year, his son Robert Grace succeeded as head of the regiment but he was badly wounded at the Battle of Aughrim in July 1691 and died the following year. Nevertheless, the regiment continued to operate, with Captain Thomas Shortall commanding a company of 100 men at the second Siege of Limerick. Following the treaty concluded there in October 1691, Shortall like many others left Ireland and joined the French army. He is said to have continued to serve until the age of 88, and to have died in 1762 at the age of 104.




What happened to Balief Castle in the aftermath of the Williamite Wars is something of a mystery, but it appears to have passed into the hands of the St George family, which owned large estates in County Kilkenny. In Atkinson’s The Irish Tourist (1816) Balief Castle is described as being ‘the seat of Mr St. George’, presumably Robert St George whose father Sir Richard St George lived not far away at the since-demolished house of Woodsgift. However, it would seem there was another, more modern residence here, again no longer standing, since the earliest Ordnance Survey map shows ‘Balief House’ on or adjacent to the same site of the castle. Hercules Langrishe St George is later listed as owning the property, and being a local Justice of the Peace before Balief became occupied in the 1860s by Denis W Kavanagh, another gentleman whose family owned land in the area. Thereafter it is hard to find any more information about the place. 




Most Irish tower houses are either square or rectangular. Circular examples are relatively rare, although one has featured here in the past, Moorstown Castle, County Tipperary (see In the Round « The Irish Aesthete). Thought to date from the 16th century, Balief Castle is another member of this small group. The building castle rises approximately 35 feet and has an interior diameter of the castle of 15 feet, eight inches with walls some eight feet, four inches thick. As is customary, it has a single entrance, a pointed arch door on the west side. Immediately inside, is the staircase, with an ascent to the top by 50 stone steps, the majority of which are eight inches thick (the final nine being six and a half inches thick), but all floors and other internal divisions have long been lost, leaving one space that climbs to a still intact domed roof. Today Balief Castle stands in the middle of a field, little noticed and little known. 


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A Cabinet of Curiosities


Cabinets of Curiosity have probably always existed, albeit in different forms. In a seminal work on the subject published in 1908, Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Spätrenaissance (later translated as Art and Curiosity Cabinets of the Late Renaissance), Viennese art historian Julius von Schlosser argued that Greek and Roman temples acted as proto-cabinets of curiosity, a role then taken on by medieval churches with their valuable holdings of vessels, vestments and reliquaries, often masterpieces of craftsmanship incorporating precious metal and gemstones.
As we now understand the term, cabinets of curiosity were first created in the late 15th and 16th centuries, around the same time that Western European horizons – geographic, religious, scientific, metaphysical – began to expand. New worlds, new ideas: they recast the way in which people thought of themselves and their surroundings. The Renaissance cabinet of curiosities was frequently filled with rare and priceless treasures. But unlike collections held in earlier ages by temples or churches, these ones belonged to individuals. And while they were the forerunners of the modern museum, initially they existed not in the public realm, but in private ownership and were thus accessible only to the privileged few. Because their contents were costly, they were almost exclusively the preserve of princes and members of the aristocracy, representative of that caste’s wealth and power. Cabinets could vary in size from a single piece of furniture – a cabinet – with drawers holding different articles, to a room or even series of rooms specifically designed to display the owner’s collection.






By the mid-16th century, similar collections had begun to appear north of the Alps and to develop into the kunstkammer (room of art), a term apparently first employed by Count Froben Christoph of Zimmern in his historical account Zimmerische Chronik of 1564–66. Alternatively, they might be called Wunderkammer (room of wonder). Whatever the name, they featured a broad range of objects, including Artificialia (products of man) and Naturalia (products of nature), with some pieces being a hybrid combination of both. A cup owned by the Emperor Rudolf II in the early 17th century, for example, was made from an elaborately carved horn of a rhinoceros, on top of which sat a silver-gilt lid in the form of a grimacing monster, a fossilized shark’s tongue coming out of its mouth and a pair of African warthog tusks serving as its horns. Scientific instruments, clocks and automaton might also feature in the typical kunstkammer. Priceless works of art were placed alongside strange items brought from distant lands on one of the newly opened global trade routes, pieces from the distant past were displayed next to the newest objets de vertu. They were united in their diversity, their beauty and their singularity. In many instances, they were small but wondrously formed, a display of the craftsman’s ingenuity, incorporating rare materials such as crystal, ivory and amber, together with gold and silver and gemstones.
Collectors would acquire valuable antiquities, including sculptures, mosaics, cameos, medals and coins. They commissioned paintings from leading artists and sought out bizarre and curious pieces. Isabella d’Este was the proud owner of a unicorn’s horn, while in 17th century Vienna the Emperor Ferdinand III possessed a bowl (or chalice) said to have come from Solomon’s Temple as well as horn which had belonged to the Magi. Other collectors came to own mermaids’ skeletons or taxidermized creatures that were part bird, part beast. Brought together, these diverse items reflected the era’s budding curiosity and insatiable thirst for better comprehension of what was then a rapidly changing world. Collections were simultaneously intended to delight the eye and to encourage closer study of nature in all her forms. In 1565 Samuel Quiccheberg, scientific and artistic adviser to Albrecht V of Bavaria, published Inscriptiones vel tituli theatre amplissimi, the first treatise on collecting in which he described the cabinet of curiosity as being ‘a theatre of the broadest scope, containing authentic materials and precise reproductions of the whole of the universe.’
While some of the largest and most famous Kunstkammern were formed by the likes of the Emperor Rudolf II in Prague Castle or the Archduke Ferdinand II in Schloss Ambras outside Innsbruck, members of the emerging European bourgeoisie also began to form their own collections. In 1599 the Neapolitan apothecary Ferrante Imperato published Dell’Historia Naturale, which included an engraving depicting his own cabinet of curiosities then on display in the city’s Palazzo Gravina. The picture shows the extraordinary objects gathered by Imperato in one room, said to have numbered as many as 35,000 plant, mineral and animal specimens, including shells, marine creatures and even a crocodile suspended from the ceiling.





Great collections continued to be formed over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, perhaps none greater than belonging to Sir Hans Sloane. Born in 1660 in Killyleagh, County Down, even as a child Sloane collected plants, shells, bird eggs and other objects of natural history which he carefully catalogued. At the age of 19 he left Ireland and moved to London to study chemistry and then medicine. After some years travelling elsewhere in Europe, Sloane spent time in Jamaica and the Caribbean (where he is sometimes credited with inventing milk chocolate). Back in London and married to an heiress, he became a successful physician, appointed President of the College of Physicians in 1719. He also continued collecting, so that by the time of his death at the age of 92 in 1753 he had amassed some 71,000 objects, many of them acquired from other collectors – notably James Petiver and William Charleton – and housed in a property he owned in Chelsea, London (where he is still recalled through the names of such locations as Sloane Square and Hans Crescent). In his will, Sloane bequeathed the entire collection to the nation, on condition of payment of £20,000 to his heirs, and that Parliament create a new and freely accessible public museum to house it. The funds were raised through a national lottery and in June 1753, an Act of Parliament established the British Museum, where much of Sloane’s collection remains to the present day.
Sir Hans Sloane was by no means the only Irish creator of a cabinet of curiosities. Also in the 18th century, Dr Richard Pococke, a Church of Ireland clergyman who in 1756 became Bishop of Ossory, developed his own remarkable collection, perhaps inspired by those he had seen when travelling through Europe as a young man. Writing from Berlin to his mother in October 1736, he described visiting ‘the Chambers of Sciences & Curiosities in the Palace, where are very rich Cabinets & great curiosities, natural & artificial…an Egg with a Crocodiles head just out of it no bigger than a Goose Egg, a trunk of a tree with the horns of a deer run thro it & part of the head let into it, which I believe was done by art, the tree standing & appears plainly to have grown after it being much bigger where the horns run in than in any other part, stones natural mix’d with gold, &c.’ Pococke later travelled to the Middle East and while there acquired objects, including ancient Egyptian mummies, bringing them back to Ireland where they were installed in the Bishop’s Palace in Kilkenny. Visitors to the episcopal residence could see the mummies alongside antique Greek and Roman coins and medals, as well as urns, fossils and shells, and in the garden several basalt stones that Pococke had carried off from the Giant’s Causeway in County Antrim.
Incorporating items collected by Charles Cobbe, Archbishop of Dublin, the cabinet of curiosities at Newbridge, County Dublin was essentially the creation of his son Thomas and daughter-in-law Lady Betty Cobbe who lived there from the time of their marriage in 1755 to their respective deaths in the early 19th century. Originally referred to as ‘ye Ark’, the cabinet filled an entire room in Newbridge, its walls lined with hand-painted sheets depicting oriental scenes and held in place by faux bamboo découpage trellising. A suite of specially made cases and display cabinets were filled with a typically diverse range of items, shells, exotica, curios, much of it from other countries. In 1758, for example, the Cobbes bought some coral, as well as a nest of vipers and a ‘Solar Microscope.’  Eventually, the collection came to include a stuffed crocodile, an ostrich egg mounted in a bog oak stand, a set of ivory chess pieces from China and a depiction of the coronation of George III (1761) carved in bone and placed inside a glass bottle.
Over time, the room in Newbridge began to suffer neglect: even by 1858 it was being described as ‘the poor old museum.’ In the 1960s the paper on the walls was taken down and sold, the cases and cabinets moved first to the basement and then an attic lumber room, and the space converted into a sitting room. More recently, Newbridge’s cabinet of curiosities has been recreated, a replica of the wallpaper produced from memory by a member of the family, Alec Cobbe, the cases brought down from the attic, and a replica sample of the collection once more on display. It offers an opportunity to see how cabinets of curiosity, in all their quirky, whimsical idiosyncrasy, would have looked when they were more widespread.

Kunstkammer: An Idiosyncratic Cabinet of Curiosities runs at Lismore Castle Arts, County Waterford until October 26th 2025. 

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Difficult to Locate without a Guide


In Parnell and His Island, originally published as a series of articles in Le Figaro in 1886, George Moore recalls an early morning duck shooting expedition on Lough Carra, County Mayo. He and his companion set off in the dark across the wind-tossed lake in a water-logged boat, landing before the remains of Castle Carra. Moore describes how, to escape the bitterly cold wind, the two men decide to take shelter in the building. ‘Dacre says he’ll be able to find the way, and after much scratching amid the bushes, and one cruel fall on the rocks, we reach some grass-grown steps and climb through an aperture into what was once probably the great hall. A high gable shows black and massy against the sky, and tall grass and weeds grow about our feet, and farther away the arching has fallen and forms a sort of pathway to the vault beneath. Centuries of ivy are on walls, and their surfaces are broken by wide fissures, vague and undistinguishable in the shadow and cold gloom. But as the moon brightens I see, some fifteen feet above me, a staircase – a secret staircase ascending through the enormous thickness of the walls. What were these strange ways used for? Who were they who trod them centuries ago? Slender women in clinging and trailing garments, bearded chieftains, their iron heels clanging; and as I evoke the past, rich fancies come to me, and the nostalgia of those distant days, strong days that were better and happier than ours, comes upon me swiftly, as a bitter poison pulsing in blood and brain; and regardless of my friend’s counsels, I climb towards the strange stairway, as I would pass backwards out of this fitful and febrile age to one bigger and healthier and simpler…’ 





Sited on a small peninsula on the eastern shores of Lough Carra, the castle here was built by the Anglo-Norman Adam de Staunton in the late 13th century. His descendants remained in possession of the property for the next 300 years, mixing with other local families and hibernising their surname to MacEvilly. In 1574 the castle’s owner was Moyler or Miles M’Evilly, but some time later the building and surrounding lands were acquired by Captain William Bowen, his possession confirmed by deed of feoffment dated November 1591 and made to him by Peter Barnewall, Baron Trimleston. How the latter came to have a claim on the place is unclear.  Following Captain Bowen’s death without an heir in 1594, Carra Castle passed into the ownership of his elder brother Robert Bowen who lived in County Laois. He in turn gave it to his younger son Oliver Bowen, who occupied the castle until the outbreak of the Confederate Wars in 1641 when he fled to Wales, dying there without issue in 1654. After the restoration of Charles II in 1660, Castle Carra was granted to Sir Henry Lynch, third Baronet, a member of the well-known Galway family. His grandson, Sir Henry Lynch (fifth baronet) took up residence in the area, building a new residence close to the old castle which was then abandoned. A series of formal terraces led from this house down to the lakeshore. However, following Sir Henry’s death in 1764, his heir Robert Lynch moved to another property in County Mayo, originally called Moate but then renamed Athavallie near the town of Balla; today this building is a community school. Sir Robert had married Jane Barker, granddaughter and heiress of Tobias Blosse of Little Bolsted, Suffolk and assumed the additional surname of Blosse, the family thereafter being known as Lynch-Blosse. Meanwhile, both the old castle and the more recently constructed house at Carra were abandoned, the latter building being described as ‘almost in ruins’ in a report on the estate prepared by civil engineer and land surveyor Samuel Nicholson in 1844. 





The core of Castle Carra dates from the time of Adam de Staunton in the late 13th century, although several alterations were subsequently made to the building. Measuring some 45 by 25 feet internally, and of three storeys with its entrance on the first floor of the south side, the roofless castle is an example of the mediaeval chamber-tower which typically comprised a rectangular block with large open spaces on the first-floor level. Later additions to the site include a plinth, bawn and gateway, these probably dating from the 15th century. Long neglected and in a relatively remote spot, an Irish Tourist Association survey undertaken in the early 1940s describes the castle as ‘difficult to locate without a guide’, and that remains the case to the present day. 


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