Category Archives: Country House

Something of a Rarity



Originally from Yorkshire, in 1657 Montifort Westropp settled in Limerick city and three years later was comptroller of the port there. Subsequently he purchased various parcels of land in Co. Clare where he held the office of High Sheriff in 1674 and 1690, as well as being appointed a Commissioner for the county by an Act of Irish Parliament in 1697. Following his death the following year, several of his sons continued to prosper: one son, also called Montifort – a forebear of the antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp – purchased the Attyflin estate near Patrickswell, County Limerick from the Chichester House Commissioners in 1703, and the same year, another son, Thomas Westropp bought an estate in the same county at Ballysteen. Some kind of castle or tower house evidently stood here, but it was replaced by the present building in the last quarter of the 18th century, perhaps by the original Thomas’s grandson (also called Thomas) who died in 1789.





Following Thomas Westropp’s death in 1789, the Ballysteen estate was inherited by his only surviving son, General John Westropp. However, when he died in 1825 without issue, Ballysteen reverted to one of the children of his sister Sara who in 1775 had married Colonel Thomas Odell of Ballingarry, County Limerick. The couple’s third son, Edmond, duly inherited his uncle’s estate and changed his name to Westropp. His grandson Edward also had no son but two daughters, one of whom, Elizabeth, in 1942 married Maurice Talbot, son of the Dean of Cashel and himself, from 1954, Dean of Limerick. Ballysteen was in due course inherited by the present generation of the family who have, for the first time in its history, offered the property for sale. 





As seen today, Ballysteen is a two-storey, five-bay house, with east-facing rendered facade and a west-facing, four-bay garden front, as well as lower two-storey wings on either side of the main block. Internally, the house appears to have been last undergone alterations around 1820, or perhaps soon after 1825 when it was inherited by Edmond Odell Westropp. To the front, much of the space is taken up by a substantial, three-bay entrance hall, with the staircase in an adjacent area to the immediate north. Behind the entrance are the two principal reception rooms, drawing and dining, and all three have white marble chimneypieces typical of the late-18th/early 19th century. They also retain some mahogany furniture from the same period: the dining room, for example, has a pair of arched niches each of which holds an identical buffet with slender spiral twist legs, while the entrance hall has a pair of bookcases with similar decorative detail, suggesting they all came from the same workshop at the same time. A sitting room/library is accommodated in the south wing while the kitchen, pantry, scullery and so forth, together with the service staircase, can be found in its northern equivalent. Upstairs are six bedrooms, some with dressing rooms. Thanks to being left unaltered for so long, Ballysteen retains the appearance and character of an Irish country house once widespread but today something of a rarity. One must hope that whoever is fortunate to acquire the property, while updating some of the facilities, retains that wonderful character. It is too precious to lose.



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Glenville House


In 1763 John Massy, who served as Treasurer of Limerick, bought an estate in the county called Glenville. John was the great-grandson of Hugh Massy, an English soldier who had come to Ireland during the Confederate War period and afterwards settled in this part of the country, being granted land at Duntrileague: when Burke’s Peerage first appeared in the 19th century, the Massys – several of whom had by then being granted titles – claimed descent from one Hamon de Massy who, seemingly, had accompanied William the Conqueror to England in 1066. Be that as it may, the family now firmly established themselves in County Limerick, intermarrying with other landed dynasties and with sundry younger sons becoming either Church of Ireland clergymen or soldiers: a cousin of John Massy, General Eyre Massey (for unknown reasons, he spelt his surname differently to other branches of the family) as a result of his distinguished military career was created Baron Clarina of Elm Park in 1800. And among the next generation of the family to live at Glenville, several sons of William Massy and his wife Ann Creagh – the couple would have no less than 23 children – served as clergymen and soldiers. Given the extraordinary number of offspring, it is hardly surprising that in the early 19th century the house was enlarged. 





From among the many children of William and Ann Massy, one of their sons John, again a Captain in the British army – inherited Glenville and lived there until his death in 1846. The property then passed to his son William but he opted to sell it to his uncle, Eyre Massy (another of William and Ann’s children). After he died in 1869, Glenville passed to his son, Jonathan Bruce Massy who, bucking the family trend for large families, had only two daughters. When he died in 1903, Glenville was left not to one of these two women, but to a nephew, Henry Eyre Massy, who lived in Australia. Seven years later, he sold the estate back to his uncle’s elder daughter, Frances who had married Thomas Crawford Coplen-Langford the same year as her father’s death but had then been widowed just a couple of years later: curiously, Thomas’s elder brother Richard also married a member of the Massy family. Meanwhile, his widow Frances, having bought Glenville in 1912, remained there until her death in 1956. The house was then occupied by Langford relatives until bought some years ago by the present owners who have since undertaken extensive work on the property.





Above a former carriage house in the yard to the rear of Glenville, a keystone carries the information ‘WM/AD/1803’ but at least part of the building is older than this date. What is now a wing to the right of the main block is probably the original residence here, a late 17th/early 18th century long house, one room deep and of two storeys. Evidently, given the size of William and Ann Massy’s family, this structure was insufficient, hence the addition of 1803. Below wide eaves, the south-facing new house, of coarse-dressed limestone and two storeys, has three bays with a central breakfront, the ground-floor door flanked by side lights. Internally, the layout follows a customary tripartite plan, dining room to one side of the entrance hall and drawing room to the other. The former has a Kilkenny marble chimneypiece, the latter one of white marble. Returning to the hall, there are two doors facing the entrance, with a fanlight between them. That to the right is blind, while that to the left gives access to a staircase leading to the first floor (and lit by the aforementioned fanlight). Behind the house is a generous yard, which has been partially restored by the present owners. This in turn opens into a substantial walled garden. Glenville is significant because it is an example of a gentry residence from the late Georgian period, similar in style to aristocratic country houses but built and decorated on a more modest scale. As the gentry class has disappeared in this country, so too have many of their properties, which makes the survival of Glenville all the more cheering.  


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Another Gratifying Example



Following the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, Captain George Pepper was confirmed by the crown in ownership of Ballygarth Castle, County Meath, a property that had hitherto belonged to the Netterville family. However, by the second half of the 18th century, one branch of the Peppers had settled in County Offaly where, in 1777 they commissioned a new residence called Loughton. Facing north across sweeping parkland, as originally constructed, the house had its entrance located in a central canted bay with two bays on either side, and probably looking not unlike Newhall, County Clare (see New Blood for New Hall « The Irish Aesthete). It served as home to Thomas Ryder Pepper until killed in a hunting accident in 1828. Having no direct heir, he directed that Loughton be left to his brother-in-law, Lt-General Benjamin Bloomfield, who had been created Baron Bloomfield three years before. After a distinguished career in the army, Bloomfield had entered royal service, acting as an Aide-de-Camp, then Chief Equerry and Clerak Marshall to the Prince of Wales, before becoming Private Secretary to George IV, as well as Keeper of the Privy Purse and Receiver of the Duchy of Cornwall from 1817-22. It was in his role as Keeper of the Privy Purse that he ran into trouble, since Bloomfield attempted to curb the monarch’s notorious extravagance, thereby not only incurring the latter’s wrath but also that of Lady Conyngham, George IV’s mistress and a frequent beneficiary of his largesse: once a great friend of the king, Bloomfield was ignominiously removed from his positions in 1822. 





Following the first Lord Bloomfield’s death in 1846, Loughton was inherited by his only son, John, second baron and diplomat who began his career in 1824 acting as an attaché in Lisbon. In 1851 he was appointed ambassador to Berlin and from thence to Vienna in 1860, eventually retiring 11 years later. When he died in 1879, he left no legitimate heir, although while posted to Stockholm in 1826 he had at least one child with Swedish actress Emilie Högquist, later mistress of King Oscar I. The Loughton estate then passed to Benjamin Bloomfield Trench, whose mother Georgiana had been a sister of the second Lord Bloomfield: the Trenches lived not far away at Cangort Park (see A Work in Progress « The Irish Aesthete). Benjamin Bloomfield Trench and his wife Dora had two daughters, and following their deaths, Loughton passed once again to another relation, Major Anthony Guy Atkinson, whose family for many generations had also lived in the area at Cangort House (see A Feast of Colour and Light « The Irish Aesthete). His son would sell Loughton in 2001 to Dr James Reilly, former Minister for Health who, in turn, sold the property to its present owners in 2016. 





As seen today, Loughton shows the results of a radical remodelling and enlargement of the house undertaken by architect James Pain in the mid-1830s for the first Lord Bloomfield. On the exterior, the entrance was moved from the north front’s canted bow to a new single-storey extension on the east side, leaving a rather sober rendered facade of three storeys over basement, tall, plain and relieved only by the windows’ limestone dressings. The eight-bay, south-facing garden front is altogether more immediately engaging, reversing the plan on the north side so that full-height canted bays flank a central two-bay recess, the window treatments also more dressed with details such as pediments and entablatures on console brackets. One curious feature is that the heights of the windows in the two central bays have not been raised to match those on either side, thereby disrupting the lines. The enfilade of principal reception rooms lies immediately behind this front, the drawing room leading to the library and thence the dining room. Immediately behind the library, Pain cleverly used the canted bow former entrance as a hall, its cantilevered stone staircase snaking around the walls to the main bedrooms immediately above. The most important of these formerly contained a richly carved bed made in 1821 in expectation of a visit to the house by George IV: the king never came to Loughton but the bed remained in situ until very regrettably sold at auction in 2016. Meanwhile, off the staircase hall can be found the former billiard room which acquired its present decoration of inlaid doors and window shutters, as well as a Tudor Revival chimneypiece, around 1890 seemingly thanks to Dora, wife of Benjamin Bloomfield Trench. Since acquiring the property nine years ago, when all the contents were sold, the current owners have been working both to refurbish and refurnish Loughton, an arduous task given the size of the place. Nevertheless, given how much has already been achieved here, their ambitions seem perfectly achievable. This is another gratifying example of what can be done to ensure Ireland’s historic houses have a viable future. 



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A Brave Initiative



The story of Dr James Barry – a military surgeon in the British army during the first half of the 19th century who, on his death in 1865, was discovered to have been a woman called Margaret Anne Bulkley – is well-known. However, today’s post concerns another doctor of the same name and period, but who lived in County Kerry. Born in 1800, James Barry settled in Cahersiveen, where he had a successful practice and, despite being a Justice of the Peace, was a supporter of the Fenians: during an unsuccessful uprising in this part of the country in February 1867, it was reported that he had given shelter to a number of Fenians, one of their leaders, John Joseph O’Connor, taking the doctor’s horse when they departed. And an official report into local disturbances during the 1872 elections noted ‘the obstructive attitude of a local J.P., Dr. Barry, when the police were trying to restore the peace’ with the doctor described as ‘a disgrace to the Bench.’ Barry was clearly a man of both influence and affluence: by 1828 he was able to make an offer to Daniel O’Connell to buy the materials of Carhan House (where Daniel O’Connell had been born), although this may have meant just the doors, chimneypieces and so forth: the earliest Ordnance Survey map of 1841 already describes Carhan as being ‘in ruins.’ The same map also shows the first bridge across the river Fertha linking Cahersiveen with the Iveragh Peninsula; hitherto the only way to get across was by ferry. A pedestrian timber structure (it would be replaced in the 1930s with the present concrete bridge), this features on the Ordnance Survey map as ‘Barry’s Bridge (in progress). It was officially opened in 1847. The doctor’s motives for involvement in this project may not have been altogether altruistic because the following decade he built himself a fine new residence on the other side of the river and overlooking Cahersiveen. Access to this property was made easier by the existence of a bridge bearing his name.





In January 1857, Dr Barry married, seemingly for the first time. His bride was Honoria Ponsonby, whose family had, until the previous decade, lived at Crotta House, an important 17th century residence which survived in part until the 1970s. Honoria was a widow, having previously been married to Richard Francis Blennerhassett of Kells, County Kerry. His wedding may have spurred the doctor into building a new house for himself and his wife, because the following year he embarked on just such a project, leasing a site from the Marquess of Lansdowne on the north side of the river, with the land running down to the water’s edge and the marquess contributing £100 towards its construction. The building was given the name Villa Nuova, although, again looking at the earliest Ordnance Survey map, there is no evidence of an older structure here, certainly not one of any substance. As first built, Villa Nuova was of two storeys over raised basement; the rear of the latter looks to be of earlier date, so there may have been some kind of structure here before. The exterior’s most notable feature are the facade’s two steeply pitched gables with a small recessed bay between them. The present entrance porch, accessed at the top of a flight of Valencia slate steps, replaces an earlier one burnt in the 1920s. On either side of the house are two-storey canted bays which may be original or perhaps added later, although they can be seen in an early photograph of Villa Nuova. 





The history of Villa Nuova in the last century is a little unclear. Dr Barry and his wife had no children of their own, and the house thereafter seems to have passed through a variety of hands. In the 1901 Census, it is listed as being occupied by Resident Magistrate Major Ernest Thomas Lloyd, retired from the Bengal Civil Service, together with his four young children and three household servants. Ten years later, the occupant of the building was local solicitor James Shuel. However, by the early 1920s Villa Nuova was owned by one Bartholomew Sheehan, a local merchant who also had commercial premises in Cahersiveen: both these and the house suffered from being attacked and burnt by anti-Treaty forces in 1922. In consequence, Villa Nuova was left gutted and had to be reconstructed, so that much of the interior seen today dates from the mid-1920s. This includes a series of tiled chimneypieces produced by a Devon-based company called Candy and Co, as well as handsome oak doors and architraves, and a fine staircase. Villa Nuova then became home to the Duffy family, a relative of whose was the last to live in the house some 20 years ago. In September 2007, the building, together with some 54 acres, was sold to a local company for €2.35m, but was then left empty and unoccupied. Most recently, together with the immediate land, it has been bought by new owners who have embarked on an ambitious programme of retrieval and restoration, with the intention of bringing the place back to a habitable condition in which they will live. It’s a brave initiative, and – as always with such projects – deserves applause and all possible support.



For readers interested in following the restoration of Villa Nuova, the owners are chronicling progress on YouTube ((1) Villa Nuova – YouTube) and Instagram (@villa_nuova_)

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A Good Showish Figure



To the immediate east of St Macartan’s Cathedral in Clogher, County Tyrone stands the former bishop’s palace which was likewise rebuilt in the early 18th century by the Rev Dr John Stearne. Mrs Delany visited the place in August 1748 when it was occupied by Stearne’s successor, Robert Clayton and his wife, and while she thought the garden  ‘pretty with a fine large sloping green walk from the steps to a large basin on water, on which sail most gracefully fair beautiful swans,’ she was less satisfied with the house, describing it as ‘large, and makes a good showish figure; but great loss of room by ill-contrivance within doors. It is situated on the side of so steep a hill that part of the front next the street is under ground and from that to the garden you descend fifty stone steps which is intolerable.’ In consequence, while the seven-bay entrance front is of three storeys, the six-bay garden front is of four storeys. As seen today, the old palace is the result of work undertaken here by Lord John George Beresford, bishop in 1819-20 and then Lord Robert Tottenham. Following the union of the diocese of Clogher with the archdiocese of Armagh in 1850, the property was sold and became a private residence. The interiors are rather plain, the most striking feature being the staircase, the ceiling of which is painted with six cherubs: these represented the children of Thomas Stewart Porter who inherited what was then called Clogher Park in 1903. The house subsequently became a convent for the Sisters of St Louis, but is now a residential care home.



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A Feast of Colour and Light


The first member of his family to settle in Ireland, Anthony Atkinson appears to have arrived here in the late 16th/early 17th century, serving as a soldier who rose to the rank of Lieutenant. In due course, he was granted land in County Offaly where, prior to his death in 1626, he built a residence called Cangort Castle. During the Confederate Wars and their aftermath, this building was garrisoned for the crown but later captured by members of the Commonwealth army and badly damaged. When the original owner’s grandson, another Anthony Atkinson, recovered the property in the aftermath of the Restoration in 1660, he built a new house adjacent to the ruins of the castle and, allowing for various additions and alterations, this remained the family’s home until it was sold in 1957. In the early 18th century, a third Anthony Atkinson, married to Mary Guy (whose father was Admiral John Guy, remembered for breaking the boom across the river Foyle and thereby relieving the Siege of Derry) trained as a barrister and served as an MP in the Irish Parliament. Several generations later, in 1859 the estate was inherited by 12-year old Guy Newcomen Atkinson, and it would seem that once he came of age in 1868, the house was extensively remodelled to its present appearance. On his death in 1890, he, in turn, left a young heir, Guy Montague Atkinson, who after coming of age chose to sell Cangort to his uncle, William Henry Atkinson; it was the latter’s grandson, Major Anthony Guy Atkinson, who sold the house in 1957, thereby ending the family’s link with this property.





The present Cangort House owes much of its appearance to architect William George Murray, who, as mentioned, likely received this commission from Guy Newcomen Atkinson after the latter had come of age in 1868. The son of William Murray, a cousin of Francis Johnston in whose office he trained, the younger man had become a partner in his father’s practice in 1845 along with Abraham Denny. Following Murray senior’s death four years later, the two younger men remained partners until 1855, after which William George Murray ran his own practice with considerable success, specialising in banks and railway buildings. However, in his final years, the architect found himself embroiled in a legal action taken by one of his clients, the Provincial Bank of Ireland, concerning this organisation’s headquarters located on the corner of College Street and Westmoreland Street, Dublin. When this building was completed in 1867, the cost was double the estimate and while the banking hall had been completed, the intended first-floor offices for the directors and management had not been fitted out. The bank took Murray and the building contractor John Nolan to court, alleging fraud and collusion in connection with the issue of certificates for extra work on the property. Although the two men were acquitted, the court of appeal ruled that, because of errors and negligence on Murray’s part, an inquiry should be held to establish whether the sums of money for extra work which Nolan claimed from the bank should be paid. Murray died in 1871, not yet aged 50. The former bank building is now part of the College Green Hotel.




The initial impression of Cangort House suggests that the whole building is an example of the Jacobethan style which became popular in the 19th century. But the west front provides evidence that at least some of the earlier structure remain, with a series of tall arched windows on ground and first floors breaking up the rendered surface. The three-bay south front is faced in ashlar limestone with advanced gabled bays having tripartite windows at either end and a pair of coats of arms in panels set each side of the central doorcase: perhaps prior to Murray’s makeover, this might have been the entrance front? The latter is now on the east side of the house, which has another coat of arms above an additional gable, and a smaller gabled porch to one side; the service yards on the north side lie behind a screen wall here. Inside the building, the same Jacobethan inspiration prevails, the various corridors’ ribbed vaulted ceilings resting on corbels. As with the exterior, only on the east side of the building is its earlier decorative history apparent. The present owners, who have recently decided to sell, wisely chose to brighten up what would otherwise threaten to be a series of mid-19th century sombre spaces. As a result, this is a house of colour and light, boldly demonstrating that Victorian interiors need not be dark. Nor indeed need their exteriors, as shown by the addition of a natural pool on the east side, fed with rain water and filled with aquatic plants. Today a feast of colour and light, the building offers a gloriously alternative approach to the Irish country house. 

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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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Making A Swift Connection



The name Woodbrook has been given to a number of houses in different parts of Ireland, and the natural assumption would be that it derives from the property having once had a brook in woodland. In the case of Woodbrook, County Laois, however, it combines the second syllable of original owner Knightley Chetwood’s surname along with the first syllable of that of his wife Hester Brooking: hence Woodbrook. An article written by Walter Strickland and published in the Journal of the Archaeological Society of the County of Kildare in 1918 provides a detailed account of the origins of the Chetwood family and their arrival in Ireland following the restoration of Charles II in 1660. There is some uncertainty as to how Knightly Chetwood, whose family had been impoverished English gentry, managed to acquire the lands in County Laois on which Woodbrook now stands: Strickland proposes that it may have come to him via his spouse, but without being able to say precisely how this should have been the case. In any case, some years after the couple’s marriage in August 1700, despite living contentedly in County Meath, he embarked on a project to build a residence on his midland’s property, albeit with some reluctance: at one stage he implored a friend to find him another house in Meath, since otherwise he would be condemned to ‘go and live in a bog in a far off country.’ Indeed, being as Strickland says ‘an uncompromising Tory,’ following the accession of George I in 1714, Chetwood found it best to live, if not in a bog then certainly in a far-off country, spending a number of years in mainland Europe before returning to Ireland around 1721 when he took an oath of allegiance to the Hanoverian monarch and abjured the Stuart pretender. It may have only been after this time that serious work commenced on the house at Woodbrook.





We know more about the early development of the Woodbrook estate than would usually be the case thanks to surviving correspondence between Knightley Chetwood and Dean Swift, who not only provided its proprietor with advice but visited the place on a number of occasions. There was likely some kind of residence already on the site, not least because Chetwood was able to write letters from there even before his new house had been built. Strickland cites a note from Swift to his host dated 6th November 1714 and composed when he had arrived at Woodbrook to find the Chetwoods away from home. The following month, after the dean’s departure, Chetwood informed him, ‘This place I hate since you left it.’ Swift is believed to have been responsible for planting a grove of beech trees close to the house, although these were cut down in 1917 for sale to the then-Government. The two men also make regular reference to an area of the estate called the ‘Dean’s field.’ Once Chetwood returned from his self-imposed exile and turned his attention to erecting a new house, Swift’s opinion was again sought, the dean recommending in June 1731, ‘I can only advise you to ask advice, to go on slowly and to have your house on paper before you put it into lime and stone.’ Unfortunately, it was around this time that the friendship of almost twenty years came to an end. Chetwood seems to have had a tricky, volatile character. He had already become estranged from his wife, husband and wife formally separating in 1725, and he was inclined to find himself embroiled in rows on a regular basis: that he and Swift should fall out accordingly seems to have been inevitable. Chetwood died in London in 1752 and Woodbrook then passed to his elder surviving son, Valentine but since he spent most of his life out of Ireland, it was the younger son Crewe Chetwood who stayed in Laois. The next generation, Jonathan Cope Chetwood, did live at Woodbrook from the time he inherited the property in 1771 until his own death in 1839. As he had no immediate heir, the estate went sideways passing to Edward Wilmost, a great-grandson of Crewe Chetwood, who duly took the additional surname of Chetwood. However, following the death during the Boer War of Edward Wilmot-Chetwood, Woodbrook passed to another branch of the family, being inherited by Major Harold Chetwood-Aiken; his widow lived there until 1965 when what remained of the estate was taken over by the Land Commission. 





The evolution of the house now standing at Woodbrook is complex, even by Irish standards. The original building commissioned by Knightley Chetwood can be seen in a pencil drawing reproduced in Strickland’s 1918 article and shows the long east-facing entrance front, seemingly single-storey but with two-storeys visible to one side and dominated by a great doorcase beneath a steeply-pitched roof. A 1770 ground floor survey is described by Colum O’Riordan in House and Home as depicting ‘a vaguely L shaped building with an indeterminate number of accretions around an older core.’ Much of this structure appears to have been damaged or destroyed in a fire in the early 19th century, after which Jonathan Cope Chetwood undertook extensive alterations to the house, not least the addition of a new neo-classical entrance front facing south. Designed c.1815 by James Shiel, it included a spacious hall off which opened drawing and dining rooms. The older part of the building contained the library and staircase, and, beyond these, service quarters including a double-height kitchen one wall of which was filled with a great dresser and above which, according to Strickland, were painted the words ‘BE CLEANLY. HAVE TASTE. HAVE PLENTY. NO WASTE.’ Later in the 19th century, further changes took place, not least in the drawing room where the walls were covered with 15 murals representing scenes of the Scottish Highlands: still extant (although some are currently undergoing restoration), they were painted in 1840 by artist David Ramsay Hay, commissioned by Lady Jane Erskine, daughter of the 25th/8th Earl of Mar and wife of  Edward Wilmot-Chetwood, as reminders of her native country. At some unknown date, a five-storey polygonal tower was added towards the rear of the house on the east side.
Alas, the later decades of the last century were not kind to Woodbrook. All the ancient trees, not least those lining the avenue to the house, were all cut down in 1969. The lake to the immediate east, created by Jonathan Cole Chetwood, also suffered devastation causing the loss of what was said to have been the largest heronry in the country. Then, in the 1970s, the owners of the house demolished almost all of what had stood behind Shiel’s early 19th century extension, everything that had remained from the original building constructed by Knightley Chetwood, along with the great kitchen and the polygonal tower. This strangely truncated property somehow survived until the present century when another owner ambitiously reconstructed the sections that had been reduced to rubble just a few decades earlier. In consequence, at least on the exterior, Woodbrook looks much as it did when still occupied by the last members of the Chetwood family. Just under two years ago, the house and surrounding lands changed hands once more, and the current owners have embarked on an ambitious and admirable programme of restoration and restitution, with thousands of trees being planted, the lake being brought back to life and the surrounding lands improved. Similar considerate work is taking place inside the building so that in due course Woodbrook will once again take its place among County Laois’s finest country houses. It’s always thrilling to visit a property which is undergoing renewal, and the owners of Woodbrook deserve all the applause and support they can get. 


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This Beautiful Mansion


In May 1610 John Brownlow of Nottingham was granted by the English government some 1,500 acres of land to the south of Lough Neagh, undertaking to settle a number of English families in this area. Within a year, the Brownlows had begun building two bawns having brought over six carpenters, one mason, a tailor and workmen and by 1619, Nicholas Pynnar could report that there now stood a ‘fair Town, consisting of 42 Houses, all of which are inhabited with English Families, and the streets all paved clean through also to water Mills, and a Wind Mill, all for corn.’ This urban settlement came to be known as Lurgan and was to remain the Brownlows’ base for several centuries although, like many other settlers, they were temporarily displaced during the Confederate Wars of the 1640s and their castle and bawn destroyed. Nevertheless, the family then returned to Lurgan and appear to have rebuilt the castle which, with various alterations and additions, continued to be occupied by them until in the early 1830s it was replaced by a new house. In the meantime, both the Brownlows and Lurgan prospered, the latter becoming a major centre for the development of Ulster’s linen industry: in 1708 Samuel Molyneux, on a visit to the town described it as being ‘at present the greatest mart of Linen Manufactories in the North, being almost entirely peopled with Linnen Weavers.’ Meanwhile, successive generations of Brownlows served as MPs for the area. Charles Brownlow succeeded to the estates in 1815 and continued to represent the constituency until 1832 when he lost his seat. It has been suggested that this may have been due to his advocacy of Catholic Emancipation and the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, neither popular stances in a fiercely Protestant part of the country. Perhaps as a consolation, he then embarked on constructing what is now known as Brownlow House, commissioning its design from Scottish architect William Henry Playfair. He was also created first Baron Lurgan in 1839. 






Ulster possesses a superfluity of country houses designed in the Tudor/Jacobethan manner but perhaps none display quite the same exuberance as Brownlow House, the exterior faced in red sandstone shipped over from Ardrossan in North Ayrshire. The house incorporates parts of its predecessor to the west and south west but the main block is of Playfair’s design, the entrance front having angled sides to form an irregular forecourt distinguished by a multiplicity of kneelered gables above which rise chimneystacks each carved with different motifs. In the midst of these and projecting forward between canted bay windows, is a door into the building. Behind and climbing above the facade can be seen one of the house’s most unusual features: an ogee domed tower set diagonally and decorated with ornamental panels on each side. The former garden front to the east, now overlooking an expanse of tarmacadam, comprises a further series of steep gables and canted bays, in the midst of which can be seen a Tudor-arched opening with the cipher of William Brownlow and his second wife Jane McNeill, together with the date 1833. The north side has another shallow courtyard with a long, two-storey wing to the west: this originally contained the family apartments. In August 1966 Brownlow House was badly damaged in an arson attack and the former family wing remains unrestored, although plans were presented last year for its refurbishment as a wedding and conference venue. 






The interior of Brownlow House is more restrained than might be expected from its exterior. The main reception rooms are on the first floor and reached by a narrow mural staircase, at the top of which is a small anteroom. This opens into the central chamber of the building, an octagonal saloon, the panels of its walls painted to imitate marble competing with gilded overdoors in the Louis Quatorze manner and a white marble chimneypiece likewise French in style. Here, as elsewhere, the flat ceilings are covered with strapwork in a variety of patterns. None of the other reception rooms is so elaborately decorated, but at least in part this may be as a result of reconstruction in the aftermath of the 1966 fire: both the original staircase of carved oak and adjacent stained glass window were completely destroyed and have since had to be replaced, as well seemingly as a number of the house’s contents. It is difficult now to imagine the house in its heyday. In 1863, John Ynyr Burges of Parkanaur, Co. Tyrone (see Without Any Debt « The Irish Aesthete) paid a visit and noted in his diary, ‘The interior of this beautiful mansion is wonderfully arranged. The furniture and fitting-up is most costly, the dinner exquisite and the whole establishment in excellent order.’ However, the Brownlows were not to enjoy their splendid property for long. The disposal of much of the estate and heavy indebtedness meant that in 1893 they had to sell the house and surrounding land, which was then bought by the Lurgan Real Property Company Ltd, before being sold on 10 years later to Lurgan Loyal Orange District Lodge, which owns it still and opens the main reception rooms to visitors, with the former dining room now a public tea room. Meanwhile, the 18th century landscaped demesne was sold to the local district council for £2,000 and is now a public park. 

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A Convenient House of Lime and Stone



Originally from Ayrshire, the first Conynghams arrived in Ireland at some date in the early 17th century and by the time of the outbreak of the Confederate Wars in 1641, the family owned property in the cities of Armagh and Derry, along with lands in both their counties and Tyrone. In 1653, Colonel William Conyngham, one of the Commonwealth commissioners in County Armagh during and after this tumultuous period, bought for £200 ‘the town, village, hamlet, place, baliboe or parcel of land called Ballydrum in the parish of Ardtra’ in County Derry, running to 350 acres. There may have been a pre-existing house of some kind already on this property, but if so it was replaced by another constructed by the colonel’s son, likewise called William and remembered as ‘Good Will’. In 1680 he had married 16 year old Anne Upton of Castle Upton, County Antrim and under the terms of the couple’s wedding settlement had agreed to provide his wife with ‘a convenient house of lime and stone, two stories high with necessary office houses.’ This became known as Springhill, its name derived from a nearby spring.






Springhill is a rare example of a 17th century Ulster Planter’s house which has survived to the present. When first constructed, presumably not long after the marriage of William and Anne Conyngham, the building was, as agreed by the terms of the settlement, of two storeys with rough-cast walls and slate roof, although the door was then off-centre and the canted bay wings did not exist. However, the two freestanding outbuildings placed at 90 degrees on either side of the main house do date from this first period. Thereby creating a forecourt, that to the left was occupied by senior staff and behind it was a yard holding turf shed, brew house, laundry and slaughter house, with enclosed gardens beyond. That to the right provided accommodation for other workers on the estate, the ground behind it sloping down to another pair of yards containing stables and, at furthest remove, a dovecote. William and Anne Conyngham had no direct heir, so when he died in 1721, the property here passed to a nephew, George Butle who duly assumed his uncle’s surname. The son of a Belfast merchant, he appears to have made no changes to the house, unlike his son William who around 1770 added wings to the house, that to the left being used as a nursery, that to the right a drawing/ballroom. As had been the case earlier in the century, he died in 1784 without a son to inherit, so Springhill passed to his younger brother David but, following his own death four years later, the estate was inherited once more by a nephew, George Lenox who chose to hyphenate his name, becoming Lenox-Conyngham. His son, William Lenox-Conynham, made further alterations to the house, adding a dining room in 1820, the year after his marriage to Charlotte Staples of Lissan, County Tyrone (see Barefoot but Battling « The Irish Aesthete). Three more generations of the family owned Springhill until, shortly before his death in 1957, Captain William Lowry Lenox-Conyngham passed responsibility for the property to the National Trust, although his mother Mina Lenox-Conyngham continued to live there until her own death four years later: she is remembered for writing An Old Ulster House, a detailed history of Springhill and its owners. 






As mentioned, Springhill is notable for being the best preserved example of a 17th century Planter house in Ulster, despite the later additions. Fortunately the Conynghams and then Lenox-Conynghams seem to have thrown nothing away, and therefore the interiors retain almost all their original appearance and contents, another rarity. It is not difficult to distinguish the period in which each room was constructed, since they then underwent little alteration. To the front, there are three main rooms, centred on the entrance hall, behind which rises a staircase with yew banisters and oak treads. To the left of the hall is a study, originally the parlour. In the 19th century, when alterations were being made to the house, this room was given oak panelling but after the National Trust assumed responsibility for the building and undertook restoration work, English hand-blocked paper was discovered still intact on the walls. Also here are a number of antique firearms, including a long gun presented to Alderman James Lenox after the Siege of Derry. To the right of the hall was the former dining room, turned into a library in the 19th century when the bookcases were installed here; as elsewhere, the contents – some 3,000 volumes collected over two and a half centuries – remained when Springhill became a National Trust property. Beyond lies the high-ceilinged drawing room of the 1770s and behind that the dining room added half a century later. Although some alterations to the property have been made (a 19th century smoking room, for example, was demolished by the NT in the aftermath of it assuming responsibility) Springhill better conveys the evolution of an historic house and its various residents than many others open to the public. As Mina Lenox-Conyngham wrote in An Old Ulster House, even the trees in the surrounding demesne ‘could tell many a tale of the nine generations of the family who have walked beneath their shade and have talked together of interests and projects, fears and misgivings for the dear old home whose spell must have twined itself around their hearts.’ 



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