Category Archives: Country House

Acquired Antiquity

Writing of the fashion for Gothic and Tudor-Revival architecture among early 19th century Irish landowners, in 1982 Maurice Craig quoted Victorian political theorist and historian William Lecky who declared that the power and property of Ireland had been conferred by successive British monarchs ‘upon an English colony, composed of three sets of English adventurers who poured into this country at the termination of three successive rebellions.’ While considering Lecky’s remarks ‘a gross overstatement’ nevertheless, Craig believed that in the aftermath of the 1800 Union ‘the landed class were haunted by these words and did not want to believe them. By castellating their houses, or adding castellated wings to them, or in extremes replacing them by sham castles, they sought – at the sub-conscious level no doubt – to convince themselves and others that they had been there a long time and that their houses, like so many in England, reflected the vicissitudes of centuries. As it happens, the romantic fashion for irregularity was just now hitting European architecture (having affected gardening a couple of generations earlier, so that, once again, if only for a moment, Ireland was bang up to date.’ Such was the case with Narrow Water Castle, County Down designed in the early 1830s by Newry architect Thomas J Duff for local landowner Roger Hall.



Myles Campbell’s 2014 doctoral thesis Building British Identity: British Architects and the Tudor-Revival Country House in Ulster, 1825-50 does not discuss Narrow Water Castle, since the house’s architect was Irish. Nevertheless, many of the points he makes are relevant to Narrow Water in particular his consideration of the reasons why the Tudor-Revival style, incorporating elements of earlier Gothic, should have proved so popular in this country. Dr Campbell has discovered that at least 127 country houses in the same style were built in Ireland in the 19th century, the vast majority of them prior to 1845 and the onset of the Great Famine (which understandably put an end to almost all country house construction). Fifty, or 39 per cent of the houses either built or remodeled in the Tudor-Revival style were in Ulster (the lowest number, just ten, were in Connacht, but this generally had fewer country houses and they were more widely dispersed about the province). Campbell proposes that ‘The group of Ulster patrons concerned were characterized by a common loyalty to the Union between Ireland and Britain, a deep commitment to their Anglican faith and an unstinting preference for British goods and services.’ Combine the desire to demonstrate loyalty to Britain with the need to emphasise (cf. Craig) longevity of residence, and one understands why Tudor-Revival became so popular. After all, there were no original Tudor buildings in this style extant in Ireland, and so versions of it had to be imported. And they were very much versions, or interpretations: in Ballantyne and Law’s Tudoresque: In Pursuit of the Ideal Home (2011) the authors note that Tudor-Revival architecture was not very specific in its detailing and could be ‘vague about the distinction between the Middle Ages and the Tudor era.’ Furthermore, as Campbell comments, given the hybrid character of the original, ‘it is unsurprising that Tudor-Revival architecture possessed a similarly imprecise stylistic pedigree and reflected the influence of both modest and grand examples. Many features of early Tudor houses such as emphatically horizontal elevations, small casement windows, crenellated parapets and Perpendicular tracery, were revisited. Their great mullioned glass windows, projecting bays and rather chaste ashlar walls served as a source of inspiration for the architects of the Tudor Revival. These architects were not reluctant to add gables, Tudor arches, turrets and label mouldings to these basic elements in the pursuit of authenticity.’





Narrow Water Castle was built to replace an earlier residence called Mount Hall which dated from the early 18th century and, judging from a surviving stableblock, was classical in manner. Like many other landed families, the Halls were of settler stock, the first member arriving in Ireland in 1603. Roger Hall’s precise reasons for commissioning a new house in the Tudor-Revival manner are unknown; by the time work began, he was in his forties and had been married for twenty years. The explanation is likely to be that given above, a desire to emphasise the family’s antiquity (through such details as incorporating heraldic crests into the main staircase window). There was also another factor at play in choosing this style over others, and that was comfort. 18th century houses, while grand, could be cold and austere with little consideration given to the occupants’ well-being. Improved building techniques and better insulation were available by the onset of the 19th century. A purist approach to Gothic, as would develop later thanks to the influence of architects like Pugin, could also lead to somewhat austere interiors. The Tudor style, on the other hand, not only implied antiquity but also offered the opportunity for domesticity: rooms could be cosy. Ballantyne and Law observe that Tudor-Revival country houses were ‘comfortable, and could be composed freely, so as to allow the convenient arrangement of rooms.’ The more formal aspects of the classical house were dispensed with in preference for a relaxed approach to layout, although the enfilade of public rooms remained. Campbell explains, ‘This suite usually contained a minimum of three formal rooms; drawing room, dining room, library or saloon, and represented the primary focus of formal social activity in the house. It was customary for the entrance front to face east and this front was almost invariably asymmetrical. There were usually service quarters to the north and, in many cases, a private family wing to the west…The emphasis here was on comfort rather than ostentation. This convenient plan, in addition to a recognizably indigenous stylistic vocabulary, transformed the country house into “a temple not of taste but of the domestic virtues.’ And because Tudor-Revival was not bound by strict rules, other stylistic features could be incorporated: hence in Narrow Water Castle, the walls of one room are covered with Chinese paper.


Scant Remains


The shell of Summerhill, County Mayo, a house that retained its roof within living memory. Summerhill is believed to have been built in the 1770s for the Palmer family its five-bay façade centred on a pedimented breakfront with first-floor Venetian window. The site on raised ground was chosen to provide a view down towards the Palmerstown river beside which stand the ruins of the Dominican Rathfran Friary. Today the two complexes rival each other in decay.

Trans-Atlantic Links


‘When Hubert and I were children and after we grew up, we lived at Temple Alice. Temple Alice had been built by Mummie’s ancestor, before he inherited his title and estates. He built the house for his bride, and he gave it her name. Now, the title extinct and the estates entirely dissipated, Temple Alice, after several generations as a dower house, came to Mummie when her mother died. Papa farmed the miserably few hundred acres that remained of the property. Mummie loved gardening. On fine days she would work in the woodland garden, taking the gardener away from his proper duties among the vegetables. On wet days, she spent hours of time in the endless, heatless, tumbling-down greenhouses, which had once sheltered peaches and nectarines and stephanotis. One vine survived – she knew how to prune it and thin its grapes, muscatels. Papa loved them.’
From Good Behaviour by Molly Keane (1981)






When Molly Keane’s novel Good Behaviour was adapted for television in 1983, Coolmore, County Cork – shown in today’s photographs – served as the fictional Temple Alice. A castle was first built here in the 12th century by the Anglo-Norman de Cogans after they had settled in this part of the country. In the 1650s the land on which the castle stood passed into the ownership of William Hodder who lived in the building. Subsequently it came into the possession of John Newenham, who may have bought the estate or inherited it as his wife Jane was a member of the Hodder family. The Newenhams are also of Norman origin: an ancestor John Newenham de Newenham, was one of the commissioners who carried out the Domesday survey for William the Conqueror in the 1080s. John Newenham settled in Cork in the 17th century, serving as Sheriff of Cork in 1665 and Mayor of the city six years later. After acquiring Coolmore, he seems to have demolished the old castle and replaced it with a more comfortable house. An extant estate map dated 1760 shows this to have been of five bays and two storeys over dormered attic. On either side, long service blocks ran forward to create a substantial forecourt. The next couple of generations prospered after making judicious family connections. John and Jane Newenham’s son Thomas married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Blackhall, one-time Lord Mayor of Dublin, after whom Blackhall Place in the capital is named. In turn their son William married Dorothea, daughter and heiress of Edward Worth, a physician, politician and bibliophile: in 1733 his library was bequeathed to Dr Steevens’ Hospital, where it remains to the present day. The next generation also married well (and twice) which meant that there were ample funds in the 1780s for the old building at Coolmore to be demolished and replaced by the present, larger house of six bays with a two-bay breakfront, and of three storeys over raised basement, the whole centred on a pedimented doorcase flanked by Doric columns and with the family arms carved into the tympanum.





One of William and Dorothea Newenham’s younger children was the 18th century politician Sir Edward Newenham, remembered today for his ardent support of the American colonists. As a result of the latter he came into contact and had extensive correspondence with Benjamin Franklin, the Marquis de la Fayette and Washington. The last of these Newenham especially admired, calling him ‘the Greatest ornament of this century.’ Likewise Washington wrote ‘To stand well in the estimation of good men, & honest patriots, whether of this or that clime, or of this or that political way of thinking, has ever been a favorite wish of mine; & to have obtained, by such pursuits as duty to my Country; & the rights of mankind rendered indispensably necessary, the plaudit of Sir Edwd Newenham, will not be among my smallest felicities.’ Despite aspirations to do so, the two men never met (although one of Newenham’s sons-in-law did stay with Washington at his country estate, Mount Vernon, Virginia in 1786) but the Irishman commemorated the American at his own residence, Belcamp on the outskirts of Dublin. Here he not only had a room containing busts of, among others, Washington and la Fayette but in the grounds of the house he raised a monument to Washington. Dating from 1778 and believed to be the earliest such tribute to the general (and the only one erected in his lifetime), it is a two-storey square tower with crenellations bearing the following, now-lost inscription: ‘Oh, ill-fated Britain! The folly of Lexington and Concord will rend asunder and forever disjoin America from thy empire.’ Belcamp and its Washington monument are themselves today in as perilous condition as was the link between America and Britain: the house and grounds have been extensively vandalized in recent years, thereby imperiling this critical association between the respective campaigns for independent government on either side of the Atlantic. As for Coolmore, County Cork – the estate where Sir Edward was raised – ironically the year after Good Behaviour was filmed there, the Newenhams, unable to manage the building any longer, sold its contents and moved into a smaller property elsewhere on their land. It has sat empty for the past thirty years and today an old television series offers the best opportunity to appreciate how the house once looked.

The Rest is Silence



In October 1958 the Hon. Garech Browne, then aged 19, discussed with his friend Ivor Browne (later a well-known psychiatrist), the problems Irish traditional music faced securing a wider audience than was then the case. At the time both men were students of Dubliner Leo Rowsome who played the uilleann pipes, the bellows-blown bagpipe which evolved from ancient Irish warpipes. Chairman of the Pipers’ Club (from which emerged the traditional music organisation Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann) and the finest performer of his generation, Rowsome could find no record company prepared to issue a long-playing album of his music. It was believed a market did not exist for such material.
Garech had already been thinking about establishing his own music label to record and distribute the music of traditional performers. But in an Ireland anxious to embrace modernisation, musicians like Rowsome were regarded as an anachronism, a roadblock on the way to progress. Following his conversation with Ivor Browne other people were drawn into the project including poet John Montague and genealogist Liam Mac Alasdair. It was discovered that the cost of producing a single LP was in the region of £500, then the average annual salary of a school teacher in Ireland. However the group of friends pluckily pooled their resources and pressed ahead. In the autumn of 1959 they issued an LP containing forty minutes of Leo Rowsome’s playing called Rí na bPíobairí – The King of Pipers.
The company responsible for this and later recordings was given the name Claddagh Records. Today known for the rings symbolising love and friendships but originally a fishing village, Claddagh is a district close to the centre of Galway city where the river Corrib meets Galway Bay. Garech chose the name for his company because ‘it had the symbol and the name, and because we are the Brownes of Galway.’
‘Claddagh Records was launched at Garech’s mews flat in Quinn’s Lane,’ John Montague later recalled, ‘with a firkin of Guinness porter (of course) in the corner, and a party which roared on until dawn, the first of many such sprawling, splendid parties.’ However, since he was still not twenty-one and therefore deemed a minor, it was not legally possible for Garech to become director of a company. Only in 1960 was Claddagh incorporated and Garech could assume the position of company chairman. Thereafter the business, while always remaining small, began to flourish and as the 1960s progressed more and more albums were produced. It is indicative of Garech’s interests that the company’s second recording should have been not of another musician but of a poet. Patrick Kavanagh, like Rowsome the finest exemplar of his craft, was persuaded into a studio where he read almost everything he had written.
The distinctive richness of the Claddagh catalogue is due to its mixture of music and spoken word. Pre-eminent in the former category are early recordings of The Chieftains but a wealth of other names deserves to be noted, among them Tommy Potts, Liam O’Flynn, Matt Molloy, Christy Moore and Ronan Browne. Composer Seán Ó Riada was one of the most influential figures in the revival of interest in Irish traditional music and shortly before his early death in October 1971 Garech, who had become a good friend, persuaded Ó Riada to come to Luggala and record a programme of Irish dance music and song airs on an upright harpsichord made in Dublin in 1764 and still in the house today. The resultant album, Ó Riada’s Farewell, was released posthumously to acclaim. Claddagh also recorded classical music, not least Frederick May’s 1936 String Quartet in C Minor, thirty eight years after its composition, as well as Veronica McSwiney’s interpretation of the nocturnes of John Field (the early 19th century Irish composer credited with creating this piano form) and mezzo-soprano Bernadette Greevy’s recordings of Brahms and Bach. But the company’s particular strength is its catalogue of traditional Irish music. ‘Our crusade for the preservation of Irish music,’ observes John Montague, ‘could be compared with the influential early recordings of American jazz and blues. The rich, bittersweet voices of Robert Johnson, Big Bill Bronzy, John Lee Hooker and others would have died with them if they had not been recorded, but because they were preserved, they became the foundation on which modern jazz has grown and flourished, as modern Irish music has also, because of those early recordings.’
John Montague’s involvement with Claddagh Records helped to ensure the company’s Spoken Word series features an unprecedented number of outstanding writers, by no means all of them Irish, reading their own work. The list ranges from Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Austin Clarke and Ted Hughes to Robert Graves, Hugh MacDiarmid, Liam O’Flaherty and, of course, John Montague. In 1966 Samuel Beckett oversaw the recording of extracts from his theatre work being read by the actor Jack MacGowran. In the studio, Garech remembers, ‘Jackie sounded so like Sam, I had to look up to see which one of them was speaking.’ The issued album’s musical accompaniment was provided by two of Beckett’s relations and the author striking a gong. One of the other distinctive features of Claddagh Records releases from the start has been the exceptionally high calibre of the sleeve artwork and notes. ‘We always believed that you should get an author who could write to produce the sleeve notes,’ says Garech, ‘and we used artists like Patrick Swift and Louis Le Brocquy and Edward Delaney…We were very fussy about typefaces and overall design. What we tried to do was get the arts to speak together.’
Claddagh’s back catalogue is unrivalled: ‘In troubled times it got us through, and with much style,’ said Ivor Browne’s son Ronan, a noted uilleann piper. ‘Claddagh set the bar very high for everyone who followed.’ Anjelica Huston, who has known the company’s founder all her life agrees. ‘I think Garech in a way was uniquely responsible for world acceptance of Irish music, Irish culture.’





In 1996 Garech undertook a complete refurbishment of Luggala, the fabulous late-18th century house in County Wicklow which his mother had been given by her father almost sixty years earlier and of which he subsequently became the most loyal custodian. As is often the case with enterprises of this sort, much of the work undertaken over the next few years was necessary but invisible. Among the more noticeable structural alterations, however, was the restoration of chimneys and battlements to their original height and scale since parts of both had been altered in the 19th century, as had the windows. The return of the latter to their original Gothic form is the most immediately dramatic modification of the building and the one which demanded the greatest assault on the structure, since sections of the external walls had to be removed. Once that work was completed, the coved ceilings of rooms affected were re-done. The result was even more radical than had been anticipated: the south-facing rooms are now inundated with light as the spectacular landscape beyond almost seems to enter the house.
In addition to the installment of arched windows, a new staircase – in fact an 18th century one salvaged from another house – was installed, as were appropriate chimneypieces in the drawing room and dining room. Internally the house was thoroughly redecorated, albeit in a style that recalled its previous incarnation. For this assignment, Garech called on the services of two friends who knew Luggala well and were sympathetic to its distinctive character: David Mlinaric and Angela Douglas. Their brief was to make the house look much as it had before, ‘the same, only different.’ ‘It was clear that Garech wanted it to feel like the old Luggala,’ David Mlinaric commented. He was by no means a passive client. ‘I was taught to use my eyes by Lucian Freud,’ Garech explains. ‘Lucian took me round the Louvre when I was about fourteen. He didn’t tell me how to use my eyes, but allowed me to use them – and then told me I was right!’ The house’s restoration was very much a collaborative process. ‘What Garech has,’ said film director John Boorman, ‘is exquisite taste in almost everything.’ It is a verdict with which David Mlinaric would concur. Of Luggala’s redecoration he says, ‘Garech really led it because he’s very certain about what he wants and likes. His taste is pretty similar to mine.’
Douglas and Mlinaric looked to source identical successors for much of what had been in the house, such as the Pugin-designed drawing room paper. This was hand printed by London firm Cole & Son using the original blocks made in the 19th century by J C Crace & Son. Other papers for the house were printed by Irish specialist David Skinner. The library curtain fabric was made by Atkinsons in Northern Ireland. They had not produced this beautiful watered poplin for years but agreed to do it for Garech and to match the colour of his grandfather’s robes as a Knight of St Patrick. The red silk velvet for the drawing room curtains came from France, and the silk for the inner curtains was made in England by Humphries Weavers. Every single item in the house is special in some way – nothing was off the peg. Even the carpets were specially dyed. As an instance of the trouble taken over the furnishings, the drawing room settee, originally made for Russborough, is now covered burgundy-coloured velvet. This fabric was gauffraged, or stamped, by a firm in Lyons using surviving 18th century wooden cylinders which broke during the process, meaning this technique can never be repeated.
An entry in the Luggala visitors’ book notes that in August 2000 a ‘christening of the chamber’ took place in the presence of Garech and several old friends like Paddy Moloney and John Hurt. The process of moving back into the house began the following month, but refurbishment work went on for some time longer. ‘Somebody said to me that Luggala could be beautiful also if done very simply,’ David Mlinaric remembered. ‘The answer to which is yes, but not for Garech.’





Is there a better – or more gorgeously – dressed man in Ireland than Garech Browne? It seems unlikely since no one else takes as much care over his appearance or over co-ordinating the colour, texture and fabric of his clothes. For all that, Garech is neither vain nor exhibitionistic. He does not particularly care to have attention drawn to what he is wearing and can seem almost abashed when this occurs. He is far from being a poseur, dislikes the company of those who are merely so and is probably most at ease when least noticed. He can, however, talk eloquently on the history and development of costume and loves to describe each element of his extensive wardrobe.
Garech Browne is a true dandy, not in the rather frivolous sense by which this term is customarily dismissed, but in the more serious fashion that dandyism has always been understood among the French. He would certainly appreciate Balzac’s remark in his Traité de la vie élégante of 1830 that ‘dress consists not so much in the garment as in the way it is worn.’ He would also no doubt agree with Baudelaire’s argument more than 30 years later that dandies ‘all partake of the same character of opposition and revolt…Dandyism is the last splendour of heroism.’ Of all texts published on this subject, the finest is Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Dandyisme of 1845. While admitting that dandyism ‘is almost as difficult a thing to describe as it is to define,’ the author noted one primary characteristic ‘is always to produce the unexpected, that which could not logically be anticipated by those accustomed to the yoke of rules.’ Dandyism, therefore, ‘while still respecting the conventionalities, plays with them.’
This perfectly describes Garech’s own approach to clothing, which is simultaneously individual and yet conformist. Individual in his fondness for mixing unusual tones and materials, he still complies strictly with what could be construed as old-fashioned rules of correct dressing. He insists, for example, on wearing braces – ‘they make your trousers stay up and I find them comfortable, as a matter of fact’ – and also always closes his shirt sleeves with cufflinks. If the colouring of his clothes is original, the cut is not: tradition rules when it comes to tailoring, and he is a stickler for good form in matters of style. But he has no desire to look the same as every other well-dressed man. ‘I don’t want to be a sheep,’ he remarked about his personal mode of dress 20 years ago. ‘Very boring to be a sheep.’ Having found a style he felt suited him, he has remained loyal to it ever since; he has worn the same beard, albeit grown steadily greyer, for more than two decades and his hair is forever worn tied back by a piece of ribbon.
Garech says he has always loved good clothing. He remembers being aged 11 when his first suit – a two-tone corduroy number – was made by a tailor called Scott with premises in Dublin’s Lincoln Place. In adulthood he chose to follow the example of his father and grandfather, and has his coats and suits made by London tailors Lesley Roberts. His shirts are made by Turnbull & Asser, his shoes by Lobb’s. Ties and braces come from a wide variety of sources including Hermes, Charvet and Lanvin. Whenever his clothing is specifically made for him, he provides the raw materials. These come from various sources including silk poplin from Egypt, Thai shot silk and heavy raw silk from India. Then there are the traditional Harris tweeds he has bought from Scotswoman Marian Campbell, as well as Irish tweed from Clifden’s Ronnie Millar and the Foxford Mills, and báinín from Ó Máille’s in Galway. His shoes are made not just from leather but also the skin of sika deer and ostrich and even elephant ears. Buttons, most often of mother-of-pearl, come from The Button Queen in London.
His wardrobe is extensive but consistent; suits tend to be ordered in batches of four or five, and all of them carry the date of manufacture inside a breast pocket. In addition, they are without exception immaculately finished and in many cases interchangeable: a waistcoat from one ensemble, for example, is worn with the jacket and trousers from another. The most striking aspect of Garech’s appearance is his fondness for colour. ‘I love different shades and not having everything strictly the same,’ he remarks by way of explanation for a blue check jacket being thrown over a brilliant yellow waistcoat (‘I like waistcoats and always have’). Taking pleasure in colour is a trait of the dandy. Garech’s approach to dress is epitomized by a complex intermingling of texture and tone. He will wear the finest silk beneath the coarsest tweed, he will allow one pattern to jostle with another for predominance, and is not afraid of striking sartorial notes which on another man might be perceived as discordant. In addition, there is an attention to detail which must usually escape everyone but Browne himself. A late 19th century French dandy, the Prince de Sagan, used to have his black silk top hat lined in green leather, a small luxury likely to be appreciated only by himself. Similarly Garech will use the most brilliantly-hued silks inside his suits where they will be seen by his eyes alone. This is the mark of the true dandy. He explains, ‘You know, in Edo Japan one was not allowed to dress fabulously. Men were completely limited in the colour of their kimonos, so they had brighter shades hidden underneath.
When Balzac wrote, ‘one may become rich, but one is born elegant,’ he might have had Garech in mind. He has enjoyed the income to dress well but this does not explain his interest in clothes. After all, there are plenty of wealthier people who look neither so polished nor as stylish as he. To be original is to invite disapproval. This is why Baudelaire’s vision of the dandy as revolutionary is so perceptive. Dandyism is a form of contained rebellion in which certain rules are broken but others strictly obeyed. It is also often a form of aesthetic self-expression, an opportunity to give public voice to private interests. In Garech Browne’s case there is an obvious correlation between his advocacy of Irish traditional dress and Irish traditional music: he not only wears the clothes and cloths of Connemara but also, more than 30 years ago, founded Claddagh Records which has done so much to revive the fortunes of this country’s original performance arts.


In memory of the Hon. Garech Domnagh Browne (25th June 1939-10th March 2018)
Text extracted from my book Luggala Days: The Story of a Guinness House, with photographs by James Fennell. 

When the Sun Comes Out


After our recent blizzards, a reminder of what Ireland can look like in the summer: Muckross, County Kerry. Here is the east front of the house designed by Scottish architect William Burn and built 1839-43 for Col. Henry Arthur Herbert whose family settled here in the second half of the 16th century. Famously Queen Victoria came to stay with the Herberts for two nights in August 1861: seemingly so much was spent preparing for this visit that the owners’ finances never recovered. In 1899 the estate was sold to Arthur Guinness, Lord Ardilaun whose wife was related to the Herberts. Later it was acquired by Californian mining magnate William Bowers Bourn who together with his son-in-law Arthur Vincent later presented the house and surrounding 11,000 acres to the Irish state. Muckross accordingly became Ireland’s first National Park.

Ruins of a Great House


Stones only, the disjecta membra of this Great House,
Whose moth-like girls are mixed with candledust,
Remain to file the lizard’s dragonish claws.
The mouths of those gate cherubs shriek with stain;
Axle and coach wheel silted under the muck
Of cattle droppings.
Three crows flap for the trees
And settle, creaking the eucalyptus boughs.
A smell of dead limes quickens in the nose
The leprosy of empire.
“Farewell, green fields,
Farewell, ye happy groves!”
Marble like Greece, like Faulkner’s South in stone,
Deciduous beauty prospered and is gone,
But where the lawn breaks in a rash of trees
A spade below dead leaves will ring the bone
Of some dead animal or human thing
Fallen from evil days, from evil times.





It seems that the original crops were limes
Grown in that silt that clogs the river’s skirt;
The imperious rakes are gone, their bright girls gone,
The river flows, obliterating hurt.
I climbed a wall with the grille ironwork
Of exiled craftsmen protecting that great house
From guilt, perhaps, but not from the worm’s rent
Nor from the padded calvary of the mouse.
And when a wind shook in the limes I heard
What Kipling heard, the death of a great empire, the abuse
Of ignorance by Bible and by sword.
A green lawn, broken by low walls of stone,
Dipped to the rivulet, and pacing, I thought next
Of men like Hawkins, Walter Raleigh, Drake,
Ancestral murderers and poets, more perplexed
In memory now by every ulcerous crime.
The world’s green age then was rotting lime
Whose stench became the charnel galleon’s text.
The rot remains with us, the men are gone.
But, as dead ash is lifted in a wind
That fans the blackening ember of the mind,
My eyes burned from the ashen prose of Donne.





Ablaze with rage I thought,
Some slave is rotting in this manorial lake,
But still the coal of my compassion fought
That Albion too was once
A colony like ours, “part of the continent, piece of the main”,
Nook-shotten, rook o’erblown, deranged
By foaming channels and the vain expense
Of bitter faction.
All in compassion ends
So differently from what the heart arranged:
“as well as if a manor of thy friend’s. . .”


“Ruins Of A Great House” by Derek Walcott

To What Purpose?


Located on a rise in the woods at Meares Court, County Westmeath stands the remains of – what? Most of the buildings on the estate date from c.1760, although the core of the main residence incorporates a much older tower house. This structure is presumably later, its interior accessed via an arched door leading into a space lit by a pair of similarly substantial arched windows that offer views over the landscape. The remains of a summer house perhaps?

Behind the Scenes


One of the best-known views of Curraghmore, County Waterford is the façade of the house, the top of which is adorned with the stag of St Hubert, a crucifix between its antlers. This figure is taken from the family crest of the de la Poers who are believed to have first come to Ireland along with other Norman settlers in the 12th century. Here is a photograph taken on the roof of the building and showing the other side of the stag. At some date a metal bar was inserted into the animals’s neck to prevent the head falling off. Meanwhile, Curraghmore’s garden front is likewise topped by a beast, in this instance a dragon with a broken spear through its neck. This comes from the Beresford crest: in 1717 Sir Marcus Beresford married Lady Catherine de la Poer, only child of James, third Earl of Tyrone. Again, repairs have been carried out to the work. Both the stag and dragon were made by Viennese-born sculptor Joseph Edgar Boehm, a favourite of the British royal family: he carved several statues of Queen Victoria and her daughter Princess Louise was one of his pupils (indeed he died in her house in London in 1890). Conveniently the back of the dragon carries the date 1st November 1872, presumably referring to when it was made rather than installed on Curraghmore’s roofline.

A Great House that had Lost its Pride


Half a century ago, in 1968, the big house at Kilballyowen, County Limerick was demolished. As its then-owner Lt.-Col. Gerald Vigors de Courcy O’Grady – whose family have been based there for hundreds of years – recalled some time later, ‘The huge rooms were too big to live in; it was impossible to live in a house of that nature. If you could live there in warm conditions – yes. It was just a necessity. No I didn’t just want to leave it empty, so there are no remains. I do not like living near ruins; there are too many around here.’ His wife commented that by the late 1960s the house ‘was in a terrifying state of repair and we did not have the money to fix it. We had thought of selling just the house, but then we were afraid we might lose the land as well. It was a great house that had lost its pride.’ There was no support for the owners and no state interest in the preservation of such properties. And so, like very many others, Kilballyowen came down.




The surname O’Grady derives from the Irish Ó Grádaigh or Ó Gráda, meaning ‘noble’. The O’Grady family originally lived in East County Clare where they were based in the area around Tuamgraney (where they built a tower house adjacent to what is now the oldest centre of continuous religious worship in Ireland, St Cronan’s which dates from the 10th century). During the Middle Ages various O’Gradys frequently held high positions in the Roman Catholic Church. It helped that clerical celibacy was then not much enforced. Thus in 1332 Eoin (or John) O’Grady became Archbishop of Cashel and, in 1366 his son, also called John, became Archbishop of Tuam. In turn, the latter’s son, another John O’Grady, was made Bishop of Elphin in 1405. At the same time they were frequently at war with other families in the area, not least their distant cousins and former allies, the O’Briens who eventually drove the O’Gradys out of Clare. One of the family, a younger son called Hugh O’Grady had in the early 14th century married a daughter of the head of the O Ciarmhaic family in Knockainy in east Limerick and this would lead their descendants to settle at Kilballyowen. There successive male heirs became the head of the family and were known as The O’Grady.





The core of the now-demolished Kilballyowen was a tower house dating from c.1500, around which a house had been built in the first half of the 18th century, and then further extended by a new wing in 1810: in 1837 Samuel Lewis described the property as ‘a handsome modern building in a richly planted demesne.’ The building had a five-bay façade with a two-bay projecting extension to one side: the garden front featured a three-bay breakfront. Nothing of the house remains but the stableyard to the immediate north-west remains. Set around an open court, the four blocks are of almost equal dimensions and contain carriage houses, stalls and accommodation for the employees who would formerly have worked here. Although in poor repair, the buildings still bear testimony to the character of the old house. Had times been different, had it survived even a decade or two longer, might Kilballyowen be standing yet? What happened here also happened right across the country during the 1950s and ‘60s. While better support mechanisms are now in place to provide some assistance, they are relatively modest, thereby leaving much of our stock of historic houses at risk. The story of Kilballyowen, a great house that had lost its pride, is a too-frequent story in Ireland.

Another Gratuitous Loss


The castellated entrance into the former Camlin estate, County Donegal. The land here was bought c.1718 from William ‘Speaker’ Conolly by William Tredennick, who had moved to Ireland from Cornwall. The drive led to a large Tudor-Gothic house which, like the entrance was designed around 1838 by John Benjamin Keane and featured a plethora of battlements and turrets draped over what was essentially a symmetrical, classical residence. The Tredennicks remained here for more than two centuries, the last of them leaving the place in 1929. Some twenty years later the main house was blown up by the Electricity Supply Board, then engaged in the Erne Hydro-Electric Scheme. It was thought Camlin would be submerged by the new lake but in fact the water’s edge never came close to the site of the building so its destruction was entirely gratuitous. The entrance is all that now remains to indicate the lost house’s appearance.