Category Archives: Country House

Beautifully Situated on a Fine Declivity


Mount Juliet, County Kilkenny dates from the 1760s when commissioned by Somerset Butler, 8th Viscount Ikerrin and 1st Earl of Carrick from an unknown architect. Located on an estate he had bought towards the end of the previous decade. The house sits on high ground above the river Nore and across from Ballylinch, a property which had anciently belonged to the monks of Jerpoint Abbey and which had passed through a number of hands before being inherited by Eleanor Redman, who married James Butler, third viscount Ikerrin: they were the paternal grandparents of Somerset Butler. The original name of the land on which Mount Juliet stands was Oldtown but this was changed to Waton’s Grove, after the Waton family who lived there until they forfeited their property in the aftermath of the Cromwellian settlement. It then passed through a succession of owners, including James II, until finally being purchased by Somerset Butler, probably in the late 1750s: a bridge over the river in front of the house carries the inscription, ‘This bridge was built at the private expense of Somerset Hamilton Earl of Carrick in the year 1762.’ Having acquired the place, he chose to call it Mount Juliet, after his wife, Lady Juliana Boyle, a daughter of the first Earl of Shannon. 





When Arthur Young visited Mount Juliet  in 1776, he described it as ‘beautifully situated on a fine declivity on the banks of the Nore, commanding some extensive plantations that spread over the hills, which rise in a various manner on the other side the river: a knole of lawn rises among them, with artificial ruins upon it…’ Another visitor in 1818 describes walking around ‘the flower gardens and to the green house which is on an uncommon plan and then round the back lawn, which is very pretty, well wooded with pretty oak between the boles of which is a beautiful view of distant woods and hills and here and there a reach of the river.’ However, the writer thought the house ‘very large, old fashioned and not pretty,’ although he did allow that it seemed ‘comfortable and convenient.’ 





Designed by an unknown architect, Mount Juliet is of three storeys over-basement. The house originally faced north-east looking down towards the river with a seven bay facade between two shallow curved bows with arched windows on two storeys. The central breakfront has Venetian windows on the two upper storeys above a tripartite pedimented and fan-lit doorway (since enclosed within a porch). There is a perron and double steps in front of the door, with iron railings  At the start of the last century, the entrance was moved to the other side of the building, with a single-bay three-storey projecting entrance bay added. Much of the interior decoration was commissioned by the second earl, Henry Thomas Butler, who inherited the estate in 1774, also the year in which he was married. The main reception rooms have splendid plasterwork, again by unknown hands, although in the style of Michael Stapleton,not least the dining room, the walls of which are lined with medallions enclosing classical figures in relief and surrounded by delicate garlands of grape leaves. But each room has its own distinctive character, as well as a variety of fine marble chimneypieces, many of which were installed when the house underwent alterations in first decades of the last century. The second earl was also responsible for the entrance hall dominated by an Imperial staircase supported by a screen of fluted Ionic columns. When the house’s orientation was altered at the start of the last century, a room was added immediately beyond the stairs’ return. 





While the first two Earls of Carrick appear to have lived within their means, the same cannot be said of the third. Soon after he died in 1838, leaving two infant sons, an auction was held at Mount Juliet where lots on offer included ‘the entire household furniture, plate, and plated ware, valuable paintings, books, piano forte, china, glass, &c.; as well as horses, carriages, farming implements and all livestock. Then in 1852, a large part of the family’s land, ‘‘upwards of 7,000 acres statute measure’ was sold by the court for the Sale of Incumbered Estates in Ireland, the auction realising a total of £40,200. By this date, all that remained was the townland of Mount Juliet and its house, which had been inherited by the fifth earl, Somerset Arthur Butler, who entered the Grenadier Guards as an ensign in 1856 and took part in the Crimean War, retiring from service as a captain in 1862. Unmarried, seemingly in later years he became a recluse and following his death in 1901 is said to have left much of his personal fortune to the Plymouth Brethren of which he was a member. Title and what remained of the estate then passed to a cousin, Major Charles Henry Butler, who never lived in the property but passed it on to his eldest son, the future seventh earl who in turn leased Mount Juliet to the wealthy General Sir Hugh McCalmont. 





Just before the outbreak of the First World War, General Sir Hugh McCalmont bought Mount Juliet from the seventh Earl of Carrick. The McCalmonts were responsible for carrying out a number of alterations to the house, not least changing its orientation and creating a ballroom in one of the wings. The family remained at Mount Juliet until 1988 when they in turn sold the property. Since then it has operated as a luxury hotel with a Michelin starred restaurant. Over the past year, the hotel’s new owners have undertaken an extensive restoration and redecoration of the house.


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Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?


Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;




Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;




But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.


William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18
Photographs of the walled garden at Glenarm Castle, County Antrim

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Turneresque



Today a country house hotel, Marlfield, County Wexford dates from the mid-19th century when constructed as an agent’s residence for the estate of the Stopfords, Earls of Courtown who lived close by in Courtown House (since demolished). The family retained ownership of the property until 1977 when it was sold to Ray an Mary Bowe who subsequently opened it as an hotel. Of rubble stone with brick facings, the original three-storey building has a four-bay, east-facing entrance front, with central two-bay breakfront. Requiring more space for guests, in 1983 the Bowes commissioned work from architects Cochrane, Flynn-Rogers and Williams whose most notable addition is an elegant curvilinear conservatory on what had previously been the main entrance: this has now been moved to the north side. In the style of those designed by Richard Turner around the time Marlfield was first erected, the conservatory now serves as a dining room. 



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Farewell to a Polymath


Last November, the Financial Times published an extensive feature on Alec Cobbe, chronicling some, although by no means all, of his many achievements. Alec, who after a few months ill health died last week, could rightly be described as a polymath, the FT summarising his various skills as an art restorer, historian, author, re-hanger, interior designer and painter who also happened to be a fine pianist. But this is to understate his profusion of talents. To take the last on that list, Alec not only played the piano, he also collected historic keyboard instruments, more than 50 of them which are on display at Hatchlands Park, a National Trust property in Surrey leased by Alec and his wife Isabel since 1984. On display there are two grand pianos which had once belonged to Chopin, as well as Haydn’s grand piano, Liszt’s Italian upright piano, Bizet’s composing table-piano, Mahler’s Viennese piano, Johann Christian Bach’s piano, on which Mozart may also have played, and instruments which formerly belonged to George IV and Marie Antoinette: anyone who visited the recently-ended exhibition devoted to the French queen at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum would have seen her piano there. But as mentioned above, this was just one of Alec’s many skills, of which he had an abundance. He was a highly talented painter (particularly of country house interiors), and separately an illustrator whose work was much in demand for the design of invitations to all sorts of smart events. In addition, he was a restorer who over the course of his life identified more than one lost old master picture, and an interior designer much in demand for his ability to hang picture collections, most recently those at Castle Howard; other houses in which he worked included Harewood, Hatfield, Hillsborough Castle, Knole and Petworth. Extraordinarily well-read and well-informed, he brought a keen and critical eye to every enterprise. But although a well-known and widely admired figure in Britain, Alec’s achievements were perhaps less appreciated in his native Ireland. 





Alec Cobbe was born in Dublin in 1945 and spent much of his childhood at Newbridge, the house some short distance north of the city where his widowed mother lived with her bachelor brother-in-law. Newbridge had been commissioned by the family’s forebear, Charles Cobbe, Archbishop of Dublin, in the late 1740s and designed by James Gibbs, seemingly the architect’s only work in Ireland (for more on Newbridge, see The Glory of the House « The Irish Aesthete). Without question, Alec’s eye received its earliest training at Newbridge, a house to which he remained thereafter devoted despite being based on the other side of the Irish Sea for the greater part of his professional life. After school, initially he studied medicine at Oxford (and won a prize for anatomical drawing) but then moved into the field of art restoration, training at the Tate Gallery before he established a conservation studio at Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, and then worked at the Hamilton Kerr Institute in Cambridge. Eventually he opened his own studio in 1981. As he explained in the FT article, the move into interior decoration and specifically picture hanging was a natural evolution: having taken care of a painting’s restoration, he would often see it hung unsympathetically. As he explained, ‘I’d think, “Why the hell did I spend all that time on the picture for it to be killed by the hanging of the thing”?’ Alec was always a man of strong opinions and with few qualms about expressing them. When the members of the public visit Newbridge today, they are seeing a house that represents his vision of its history and evolution. Yet this almost didn’t happen. When Alec’s uncle Thomas died in 1985, the house and estate were acquired by the local authority and it looked as though the family’s link with the property would be irreparably broken. Instead, just as the building’s contents were about to be removed, an agreement was made whereby they would remain on the premises and, in return, the Cobbes would be able to live in Newbridge from time to time. Although such arrangements are common in England, this is highly unusual in Ireland but proved to be an enormous blessing not least because Alec, passionate about the place, did much to improve it by driving various restoration projects and adding to the existing furnishings and works of art. He also loved to entertain in the house, and those of us fortunate to have been invited will have fond memories of convivial meals, either eaten in the main dining room or upstairs in the family flat, followed by a sound night’s sleep in one of the guest bedrooms. 





The pictures shown here reflect two rooms in Newbridge that particularly engaged Alec’s attention. The first is a cabinet of curiosities. Incorporating items collected by Archbishop Cobbe, this 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 takes up an entire room in the house, 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. While many of the surviving contents are now in Hatchlands Park, the Newbridge cabinet of curiosities was recreated, a replica of the wallpaper produced from memory by Alec, the cases brought down from the attic, and a replica sample of the collection once more on display. Meanwhile, at the far end of the house stands the red drawing room, another addition made by Thomas and Lady Betty Cobbe, working with local architect George Semple. Some 45 feet long, the room has a ceiling featuring ‘a sea of scrolling leaves and floral garlands encircled by dragons and birds fighting over baskets of fruit,’ believed to have been undertaken by stuccodore Richard Williams, a pupil of Robert West. Two hundred years ago, payments for furniture were made to Woods & Son, and to Mack, Williams & Gibton of Dublin, who were also paid for curtains in 1828. The carpet, by Beck & Co. of Bath was supplied in March 1823 for £64 and 18 shillings, while the crimson flock wallpaper and matching border came from the Dublin firm of Patrick Boylan. The present arrangement of paintings, the greater part of them collected during the previous century by Archbishop Cobbe and his son and daughter-in-law, dates from the same period. Some of the collection had been sold in Dublin in 1812, and in 1839 two key paintings – by Hobbema and Dughet – were sold to pay to fund the construction of some 80 estate workers’ cottages. In November of that year, then owner Charles Cobbe wrote in his diary, ‘I have filled up the vacancies on my walls occasioned by the loss of the two pictures which have been sold, and I felt some satisfaction in thinking that my room (by the new arrangement) looks even more furnished than before.’ Such is still the case today, thanks to Alec. Over many years, he undertook successive projects to preserve and conserve the drawing room, so that today it is a rare example of late Irish Georgian taste. There were several other projects in this country with which Alec was closely associated, not least the redecoration of the drawing room at Russborough, County Wicklow (see A Room Reborn « The Irish Aesthete). Having served alongside him as trustee of a charitable foundation, the Irish Aesthete can testify to his indefatigable enthusiasm and diverse range of interests. Sadly, he has not lived to see the publication of his latest book, Inside the Country Houses of Britain & Ireland, due to be published by Rizzoli in September. Let it serve as a lasting memorial to the polymath that was Alec Cobbe. 


Richard Alexander Charles Cobbe, January 9th 1945 – March 31st 2026

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The Country for Ruins

Lackeen Castle, County Tipperary

A request to speak at a forthcoming academic event exploring various perceptions of ruins has led the Irish Aesthete to consider, not for the first time, what might be the particular appeal of historic buildings that have fallen into decay, and why there are so many of them in this country. ‘To delight in the aspects of sentient ruin might appear a heartless pastime,’ Henry James confessed in Italian Hours (1873) ‘and the pleasure, I confess, shows the note of perversity.’ Tumbling roofs and crumbling walls have long exerted a particular appeal, as was noted by Rose Macaulay in her wonderful 1953 book Pleasure of Ruins when she rhetorically enquired ‘what part is played by morbid pleasure in decay, by righteous pleasure in retribution…’ The morbidity of ruins without doubt helps to explain their attraction: in a state of decay, they allow us to engage in romantic speculation which may or may not be accurate. There are certainly many opportunities to engage in such hypothesising in Ireland. In some instances, they can be wonderfully picturesque, a fact highlighted by the clergyman and author William Gilpin who in 1782 published his highly influential book, Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770. Among the points he made was that in landscape painting the presence of a ruined castle or abbey would add to the work what he called ‘consequence.’ The truth of this observation had already been made apparent in the previous century by a number of French artists – Poussin, Claude Lorain, Dughet – based in Italy where they produced paintings in which ruins were often a notable feature.

Clonfert Palace, County Galway

Rappa Castle, County Mayo

Dromore Castle, County Limerick

Graffan House, County Offaly

Works such as those painted by the likes of Poussin et al are known to have had a critical influence on the design of both British and Irish country house landscapes in the 18th century, when the pictures were bought by Grand Tourists and brought back home where parklands and demesnes were laid out to look like them. Sometimes, to enhance the view, they even incorporated artificial ruins as was the case in a number of properties around the country. At Belvedere, County Westmeath, for example, the ‘Jealous Wall’ was constructed. Some 180 feet long, this theatrical sham ruin dates from c.1760 when commissioned by Robert Rochfort, first Earl of Belvedere. Seemingly, it was built in order to block the view south towards Tudenham Park, a house further along Lough Ennell which had been erected some years before by the earl’s younger brother, George Rochfort, with whom he had quarreled. The earl might simply have asked for a high wall, but instead opted for one that romantically looks like the remains of an ancient castle. At Heywood, County Laois – where the grounds were laid out by owner Frederick Trench installed a number of fake ruins in the 1770s, including what appear to be the remains of a ruined medieval church, incorporating a traceried window thought  to be 15th century and to have been brought from the former Dominican friary at Aghaboe, some twelve miles away. Towards the end of the 18th century, the demesne at Lawrencetown, County Galway was similarly enhanced by the addition of a number of follies, including a Gothick eyecatcher, intended to suggest the remains of an otherwise lost building. Back in County Westmeath, at Killua Sir Benjamin Chapman acquired some of the stonework from a medieval Franciscan friary at Multyfarnham and around 1800 used this material to create a charming ‘ruin’ visible from the garden front of the house. 

The Jealous Wall, Belvedere, County Westmeath

Heywood, County Laois

Lawrencetown, County Galway

Killua Castle, County Westmeath

Even without the addition of fake examples, Ireland has never been short of ruins. The observations of  German writer and geographer Johann Georg Kohl who visited Ireland in 1841 have been cited before. ‘Of all the countries in the world’, he wrote, ‘Ireland is the country for ruins. Here you have ruins of every period of history, from the time of the Phoenicians down to the present day…down to our own times each century has marked its progress by the ruins it has left. Nay, every decade, one might almost say, has set its sign upon Ireland, for in all directions you see a number of dilapidated buildings, ruins of yesterday’s erection.’ What this suggests is that the Irish have a particular affinity for decay and dilapidation, given that the stock of ruined buildings seen by Kohl has only further increased since his time, although too often these additions could not be described as picturesque or romantic. Last week, the Irish Times reported on two substantial 19th century houses in Phibsborough, Dublin which in 2009 were added to the city council’s list of derelict sites. A decade later, after the buildings had fallen into still worse condition, they were compulsorily purchased by the authority which then announced plans to restore them for use as social housing. Now, after a further seven years of decline, the council has announced that the cost of undertaking such a restoration would be excessive and that there were currently ‘no plans’ for the properties. Of all the countries in the world, Ireland retains its title as the country for ruins.

Ightermurragh Castle, County Cork

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The Irish Sale of the Century



From the mid-1970s through to the early 1980s a series of country house contents auctions took place in Ireland, beginning with that held at Malahide Castle in May 1976. One of the last during that particular spate took place at Luttrellstown, County Dublin in September 1983. Luttrellstown has featured here before (see Luttrellstown Castle « The Irish Aesthete). The estate here dates back to c.1210 when it had been granted by King John to Sir Geoffrey de Luterel. Two centuries later the original castle was constructed and remained in the hands of the Luttrells until 1800 when sold to Luke White, who had made his fortune operating a lottery. White and his descendants were responsible for giving the house much of its external appearance as a frothy Gothick fancy, and they continued to occupy it until the early 1920s when it was once more put on the market. In November 1927 Aileen Guinness married the Hon Brinsley Plunket and as a wedding present her father Ernest Guinness presented the bride with  Luttrellstown Castle.





During the 14 years of their marriage, the Plunkets entertained extensively at Luttrellstown. However, following their divorce in 1940, the property’s chatelaine moved to the United States, only returning to this side of the Atlantic after the conclusion of the Second World War. Then, following her father’s death in March 1949, she embarked on a thorough restoration and transformation of the castle. In this enterprise, she was assisted by English architect and interior designer Felix Harbord, who also worked with Aileen Plunket’s sister, Maureen, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, at Clandeboye, County Down. At Luttrellstown, Harbord appears to have perfectly understood his client’s fondness for the dramatic and for unexpected juxtapositions. Hence the interiors were filled with treasures that had come from a diverse range of sources. The white marble chimneypiece in the ballroom, likely the work of Sir Henry Cheere, came from England, as did the painted ceiling by Thornhill installed in the staircase hall. The dining room was given Adamesque plasterwork and a ceiling by 18th century artist Jacob de Wit, and the Grisaille Room created to hold a series of nine panels by the Flemish painter Peter de Gree, originally made in 1788 for the Oriel Temple, County Louth. In this setting, Luttrellstown’s owner entertained frequently and lavishly. As late as 1966, when many other Irish houses had been forced to cut back on hospitality, Mark Bence-Jones could report, ‘Mrs Plunket entertains in the grand manner, giving large dinner parties, dances and balls; she invites people from all walks of life in Ireland together with many friends from abroad.’ He also noted that ‘what seems like an army of footmen, something very rare in Ireland, adds to the splendour.’





In 1983, Aileen Plunket, by then aged 79, decided to sell both Luttrellstown Castle and its contents: the latter were dispersed in a three-day auction held that September by Christie’s. Described by the late Desmond FitzGerald, Knight of Glin as the Irish Sale of the Century, the event attracted considerable publicity, and many overseas buyers,  eager to see what bargains might be found. In the event, there were no bargains as many lots went for much higher sums than their estimates. On the first day, for example, a pair of George II white painted side tables, expected to fetch £25-38,000, eventually went for £110,000. A pair of Italian gilt-bronze and crystal candelabra made £65,000, more than six times their estimate, while a mid-18th century giltwood stool fetched £28,000, more than nine times the estimate. A rare Russian tapestry carpet made for Tsar Nicholas I in 1835 went for £75,000 which was double its estimate: seemingly the underbidder on this lot was David Rockefeller. On the other hand, a suite of painted Louis XV furniture which may – or may not – have been made for the Château de Maintenon, failed to make the expected £170,000, selling for £134,000. On the second day of the auction, the focus was on paintings such as a set of four hunting scenes by Jacob van Strij (£69,120), The Mystic Marriage by Jan Brueghel II (£30,240)  and a portrait of Louise de Keroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth by Henri Gascars which fetched £27,000: Aileen Plunket had bought the picture eight years earlier at the Malahide Castle sale for £9,500. On the third day, books, porcelain, glass and so forth. With approximately one third of the buyers being Irish and the rest of the bidders coming from overseas, in total, the auction made a sum just shy of £3 million. Soon afterwards it was announced that the castle and 570 acre demesne had been sold for just over £3 million. Aileen Plunket then moved to England where she lived until her death in 1999. As for Luttrellstown Castle, it has since become a wedding and events venue (a certain well-known English former footballer and his wife were married there in 1999). 


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A Pleasant Tudor Revival House of Medium Size


While several hundred Irish country houses were destroyed during the years of the War of Independence and Civil War, many more were subsequently lost over the following decades as owners found it impossible to maintain them in the face of rising prices and falling income. The late 1940s and 1950s were a particularly bad period for these properties. As early as 1932, the Irish Times had noted that ‘the dead hand of the state lies heavily on the great houses. Depleted incomes make their maintenance difficult enough, but high taxation and death duties render the passage of a great house from father to son almost impossible.’ In her 2019 book White Elephants: The Country House and the State in Independent Ireland, 1922-73, Emer Crooke notes that a large number of houses were just abandoned, with the removal of their roofs so that residential rates would not have to be paid. Furthermore, many such buildings that were destined for demolition suddenly became valuable, ‘not as residences, but as commodities. Houses were bought up for demolition by speculators interested in selling off valuable slates or lead from their roofs, while the Land Commission also demolished some houses on acquired lands, from which they could use the materials to build factories, roads and so on. Big Houses had become far more valuable and useful for their parts than when they were standing.’ Hence the enduring spectacle across the Irish countryside of skeletal remains, towering structures of which only the outer walls now remain. Such might have been the fate of Lisnavagh, County Carlow had its then-owners not decided on an alternative option to ensure at least part of the house continues to be a family home. 





Lisnavagh has been home to the Bunbury family since the 1660s when they moved to County Carlow as tenants of the first Duke of Ormond before purchasing the property in 1702. A plaque inside the present house shows that the original residence on the estate was built by William Bunbury in 1696. This survived for some 150 years until a new Lisnavagh was commissioned by Captain William McClintock-Bunbury who had inherited the property in 1846 following the death of his childless maternal uncle, Thomas Bunbury. Designs for a new house had been commissioned by William Bunbury from architect Oliver Grace in 1778 but following the client’s untimely death, the project was abandoned. Instead, a year after inheriting the estate, Captain McClintock-Bunbury asked Daniel Robertson to come up with a new scheme and this one went ahead. As with a number of Robertson’s other houses in this part of the country, Lisnavagh was constructed in a variant of the Tudor-Gothic style, heavily gabled and with many mullioned windows, all clad in local granite and finished for the sum of £16,000. The work took two and a half years to complete, during which time the same team of workers built new stables ,haylofts, farm buildings, a schoolhouse, several outbuildings, a walled garden, three miles of walls and a gate lodge. A contemporary report in the Farmer’s Gazette noted that ‘Every stone which was used in the various buildings — in the mansion house, the farmyards, demesne walls, and cottages — was dug out of the land, it being quite unnecessary to open a regular quarry, such was the abundance of stones in the land.’ A long, low building of two storeys, the house’s interior featured an abundance of reception and bedrooms which, by the middle of the last century were proving near-impossible to maintain. 





In September 1937 Lisnavagh was inherited by William McClintock-Bunbury, fourth Baron Rathdonnell who, ten years later and in the aftermath of the Second World War, was faced with the challenge of how to look after a very substantial house on a relatively small income. Initially he and his wife, the artist Pamela Drew, put the place up for sale: one potential purchaser was Evelyn Waugh, then travelling through Ireland in the hope of finding a home for himself and his family: he described Lisnavagh as a ‘practical Early Victorian Collegiate building.’ A buyer proving elusive, alternative solutions were sought, with Lady Rathdonnell consulting her uncle,  architect Aubyn Peart Robinson of Caroe & Partners, who suggested the house be reduced in size. Beginning in 1951, driven by the motto ‘Rejuvenate the Positive’, this is what happened. While Peart Robinson planned the operation, work was overseen by architect Alan Hope who ran a highly successful practice in Dublin. The decision was taken to keep the part of the house formerly acting as the service wing, not least because this had a basement, and to clear away the rest of the building which had hitherto held the main reception rooms. However, rather than just demolish a large chunk of Lisnavagh, the Rathdonnells had the granite stones of the western gable taken down by hand, numbered and then re-erected to create a new south-facing front. As a result of careful planning, when the project came to a conclusion in February 1954, rather than looking as though it had lost several limbs, the house gave the impression of having always had the same appearance. Outside, a porte-cochère previously only used by household staff became the main entrance, while indoors a library was created in what had been the old kitchen: in its new incarnation, this is today the finest room in the house, with carved oak shelving by Strahan & Co of Dublin, panels of Cordova leather and many family portraits. Lisnavagh might easily have joined the long sad list of lost Irish country houses but thanks to the clever initiative of its owners in the 1950s, it still stands today. Even more importantly, as Mark Bence-Jones noted in his guide to these properties (1978), ‘the surviving part of the house looks complete in itself; a pleasant Tudor Revival house of medium size rather than a rump of a larger house.’


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Little Changed


The origins of the Baker family in Ireland are unclear, but it would seem that Thomas Baker, an Englishman, came here and settled, likely in the first decades of the 17th century. Based in Knockordan, County Tipperary, he came to rent large areas of farmland in the vicinity, running to more than 3,730 acres, from local Roman Catholic owners. Disaster befell both them and their tenant in 1641 with the onset of the Confederate Wars: in the case of Baker and his family, they were besieged by the rebels and, following his death in February 1642, forced to surrender everything they had, down to their ‘wearing apparel’, before the family – a widow with six children – were turned out of doors. As for the owners of the land that Baker had rented, they too lost their property, divided up following the Down Survey in the following decade. However, because Thomas had loaned money to some of his landlords on the security of mortgages they had taken out against the properties he rented from them, his son Walter was able to lay claim to some of what had been lost and, in the years after the Restoration of 1660, the Bakers regained outright some of what had once been held only in leasehold. Thereafter they seem to have prospered and in October 1704, William Baker, a great-grandson of the original Thomas, purchased from Charles Blount – a grandson of one of the Down Survey commissioners – the lands on which Lismacue House now stands for the sum of £923. The original residence, long since gone, was one of the largest in this part of the country and with five hearths incurring a tax of 10 shillings, according to the 1665 hearth-money records.





Approached at the end of a long avenue of lime trees planted in the mid-18th century by Hugh Baker, the present house at Lismacue replaced an earlier residence elsewhere on the estate. This building was commissioned in 1813 by Hugh’s grandson William from Kilkenny architect William Robertson. However, the owner was not able to enjoy his new home for long because a short time later he was murdered. As reported by the Rev. William Burke in his History of Clonmel (1907), ‘The event, however, which stirred the county to its depths was the murder of William Baker of Lismacue. Returning from Cashel Sessions, November 27th, 1815, he was met by two men at the gates of Thomastown Park and shot through the head. Though a reward of £5,000 was offered, and though scores of suspected persons were lodged in the bridewells, the secret which was known to hundreds, was long kept and the efforts of the Crown baffled.’ Eventually, it seems, two men called Keating and Maher were imprisoned in Cahir where the former ‘through connivance or otherwise’, obtained some whisky which apparently loosened tongues. Their conversation being overheard, Keating was subsequently induced to give evidence, and Maher was hanged. Since the murdered man had no children, Lismacue was then inherited by his nephew, Hugh Baker who was still a minor at the time. He and his wife Marion Conyers were responsible for finishing the interiors now seen in the house. After his death in 1868, he was succeeded by his son, also called Hugh, but when the latter in turn died in 1887, the family almost lost everything as a result of needful land sales. Fortunately, the third Hugh’s widow, Frances Massy, remarried and her second husband, Major Ralph Bunbury, was able to buy Lismacue and the surrounding lands for what was described as a ‘low price’ so that the Bakers could continue to live there. Eventually, following the major’s death, his siblings transferred the place ‘on generous terms’ to one of the third Hugh’s sons, Charles Conyers Massy Baker. Today, Lismacue continues to be occupied by his descendants. 





Designed in a mildly Tudorbethan style, Lismacue’s exterior is ornamented with hood mouldings over the windows, and dainty crenellations and pinnacles along the roofline. Of two storeys over-basement, the facade is three bays wide, the centre bay distinguished by a single-storey limestone Gothick porch supported by columns. A service wing to the immediate north looks as though it concludes in a chapel, since the gable here holds a large arched window with Gothick tracery. However, this is illusory, since the interior is divided into several floors. Inside, the same restrained use of Gothick ornament prevails, but the overall tone is late Georgian classical. Many of the main reception rooms still contain wallpapers first hung in the 1830s and indeed, the charm of Lismacue is precisely that, ever since built, successive owners have never been in a position to undertake largescale alterations. Little changed since first constructed, in spirit and style, it still retains the style and spirit of an early 19th century Irish country house.

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At Peace


The Echlin family has been mentioned here before (see Lost Heritage « The Irish Aesthete). The first of them to settle in Ireland was Robert Echlin, a Scots-born clergyman who in 1612 was appointed Bishop of Down and Connor by James I. His great-grandson Henry Echlin, a judge and bibliophile, was created a baronet four years prior to his death in 1725. The family continued to thrive for a period, but already before the end of the 18th century, much of their fortune had been dissipated and by the time the third baronet died in 1799 without a direct male heir, not a great deal remained. Nevertheless, in circumstances reminiscent of Bleak House’s Jarndyce V Jarndyce, in 1827 the fourth baronet, Sir James Echlin became involved in a complex legal dispute. By the time the matter eventually concluded in 1850, Sir James was dead and legal fees had swallowed up all the money. As Sir Bernard Burke noted in Vicissitudes of Families, Volume II (1869), ‘the litigation went on year after year; the lawyers enjoyed it amazingly; they chuckled and punned, and cracked jokes about it. To them it was food and raiment; to the Echlin family, death and destitution.’ Sir Bernard went on to quote a letter written in June 1860 by the Rector of Carbury, County Kildare concerning the fifth baronet, Sir Frederick Echlin, who lived in the parish: ‘Sir Frederick can neither read nor write, and his brother is also quite an illiterate and uneducated man…He is now upwards of seventy, and utterly destitute, his only means of support being two shillings and sixpence a week, which I allow him out of our collection for the poor, together with occasional donations from Christian persons in this neighbourhood, and contributions which I get for him from my friends’ Since he was unmarried, the baronetcy passed to his younger brother Fenton, who also lived in County Kildare, ‘deriving his only support from contributions from his sons, very deserving young men, one a Policeman, another a private in the Life Guards, and the third a Footman.’ The policeman, a sergeant in the Royal Irish Constabulary and based in the Phoenix Park in Dublin, in due course became Sir Thomas Echlin, seventh baronet. Aside from the title, he inherited little  other than some family memorabilia, including a number of portraits, an oak box containing parchments, records, and deeds to the former estates and a sword used by Lieutenant General Robert Echlin at the Battle of the Boyne. The last of the baronets, Sir Norman Echlin, died on the Isle of Wight in April 2007. 





Not all members of the Echlin family suffered such serious reversals of fortune. In December 1804 Anne Echlin, described as a spinster and living in a house on St Stephen’s Green, Dublin died and left a will indicating that she owned property in County Galway, ‘estates in the North of Ireland’ and an estate in County Carlow. While the Galway and Northern Irish estates went to two cousins, Dublin barrister George Vesey and the Rev. George Vesey, the Carlow land was bequeathed to Robert Marshall and then to his wife Frances Marshall, a sister of the Rev George Vesey. The Veseys were cousins of Anne Echlin, her grandmother Frances Vesey having married Robert Echlin. However the Marshalls did not receive their inheritance outright since the will specified, ‘I have let to my friend Clement Wolsely, Esq., the house and demesne of Sandbrook, part of said Carlow estate, consisting of 165 acres for 61 years at the annual rent of 40/- by the acre, which agreement is to be confirmed.’ Just a few years later, in 1808 the Marshalls sold the entire property formerly owned by Anne Echlin, running to some 500 acres and including Sandbrook, for £488. The new owner was Robert Browne of nearby Browne’s Hill (see Escaping the Wreckers’ Ball « The Irish Aesthete) and while the Wolseleys continued to own and occupy Sandbrook until at least the middle of the 19th century, by 1888 it was occupied by Robert Clayton Browne. However, early in the 20th century, it belonged to an army man, Colonel (later Brigadier General) Bridges George Lewis before becoming home to Brigadier Arthur George Rolleston. In 1960 he sold the house and 85 acres to John and Mary Allnatt. Sandbrook was then inherited by Mrs Allnatt’s son before being bought in 1997 by the present owner, Christopher Bielenberg, who now lives there with his wife, interior designer Arabella Huddart.  





From the exterior, Sandbrook looks like a larger house than proves to be the case, the main body of the building being just one room deep. This suggests an early date of construction, likely during the first quarter of the 18th century when the building was only of five bays and two storeys over basement, a further two bays being added at either side in the 19th century, perhaps when owned and occupied by the Brownes. The central breakfront bay is delineated by quoins and features a pediment incorporating an oculus. Below, the simple granite doorcase (its more substantial lintel again being a later insertion) gives access to the panelled entrance hall with fluted Ionic pilasters and doors with shouldered architraves. A gable-ended extension to the rear accommodates the staircase with shallow treads and fluted balusters.  The reception rooms opening on either side of the hall are more simply designed, although they all have fine chimneypieces of various dates. As seen today, Sandbrook, which is available for hire for the likes of family gatherings or weddings, is relaxed, comfortable and peaceful. Hard to believe that it might ever have been associated, however tangentially, with the turmoil of the Echlin family.


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